Contrary to popular belief, the Thanksgiving parade did not begin with Macy’s; it was originally the Philadelphia Gimbel Brothers Department Store, which first made a Thanksgiving procession in 1920 with 50 people and 15 cars alongside a fireman dressed as Santa Claus. During the 1920s, also known as the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz age, the United States was in an age of wealth and development. To showcase this, they wanted to publicize the opening of the “World’s Largest Store”

and its one million square feet of retail space, so they decided to do a Parade on November 27, 1924, for New York City. The theme of the 1924 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was a nursery-rhyme theme that matched the Macy’s Christmas window display. The theme featured Mother Goose favorites such as “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.” The employees of Macy’s dressed as clowns, cowboys, and sword-wielding knights.  Actual animals such as bears, elephants, camels and monkeys were on loan from the Central Park Zoo. The parade is now a beloved 101 year old tradition held in New York City, and is watched by more than 44 million Americans each year.