Newsman: Happy thanks giving. People in United States of America celebrated the traditional thanks giving day in pre-pandemic mood with the hope to completely overcome the pandemic and celebrate next year in full force of the holiday spirits.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is back in New York City since turning to a modified, audience-free event in 2020, the 95th marching of the parade welcome back crowds and all of the spectacle people around the world have come to expect for nearly a century. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade returned Thursday in full, though with precautions.
President Joe Biden viewed the parade’s full-fledged return was a sign of renewal. he President Biden called NBC’s Al Roker on-air to say,
“After two years, we’re back. America is back. There’s nothing we’re unable to overcome,” Biden said over the phone from Nantucket, Massachusetts, where he was watching the broadcast with his family.
Balloons, floats, marching bands, clowns and performers — and, of course, Santa Claus — once again wended though 2 1/2 miles of Manhattan streets, instead of being confined to one block or sometimes pre-taped last year. Spectators, shut out in 2020, lined the route again. High school and college marching bands from around the country were invited back to the lineup; most of last year’s performers were locally based to cut down on travel. The giant balloons, tethered to vehicles last year, got their costumed handlers back. New balloon giants joining the lined up include the title character from the Netflix series “Ada Twist, Scientist”; the Pokémon characters Pikachu and Eevee on a sled (Pikachu has appeared before, in different form), and Grogu, aka “Baby Yoda,” from the television show “The Mandalorian.” New floats came from entities ranging from condiment maker Heinz to NBC Universal’s Peacock streaming service to the Louisiana Office of Tourism.
The event was on air from 9 a.m. to noon on NBC and Telemundo and it was in stream on Peacock.
The Macy’s thanks giving day parade featured 15 character balloons, 28 floats, 36 novelty and heritage inflatables, more than 800 clowns, 10 marching bands and nine performance groups. Among the celebrities scheduled to appear: Jon Batiste, Kristin Chenoweth, Sara Bareilles, Mickey Guyton, Carrie Underwood, the “Sesame Street” cast, Nelly, and of course, Santa Claus. Kelly Rowland, Miss America Camille Schrier, the band Foreigner, and many others. Several Broadway musical casts and the Radio City Rockettes also performed.
The Thanksgiving parade is the latest U.S. holiday event to make a comeback as vaccines, familiarity and sheer frustration made officials and some of the public more comfortable with big gatherings amid the ongoing pandemic.
But still, safety measures continued. Parade staffers and volunteers had to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and wear masks, though some singers and performers were allowed to shed them. There was no inoculation requirement for spectators, but Macy’s and the city encouraged them to cover their faces. A popular pre-parade spectacle — the inflation of the giant balloons — was limited to vaccinated viewers.
New York Police Department’s security measures were extensive, as usual.47Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday there was no credible, specific threat to the Thanksgiving parade.
Thousands of police officers were assigned to the parade route, from streets to rooftops. Cars were blocked from the parade route with sand-filled garbage trucks, other heavy vehicles and approximately 360,000 pounds (163,000 kilograms) of concrete barriers.
Bomb-detecting dogs, bomb squad officers, heavy-weapons teams, radiation and chemical sensors and over 300 extra cameras also were dispatched to the parade route, NYPD Chief of Counterterrorism Martine Materasso said.
Inside the barricades, the parade features about 8,000 participants, four dozen balloons of varying sizes and two dozen floats.
The classic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been watched by millions of New York residents and millions more on television.
In 1924, Macy’s held its first parade but instead of focusing on Thanksgiving it was called Macy’s Christmas Parade. The parade was held just by store employees and the hope was the celebration would influence customers to shop for the coming Christmas holiday. The first parade started at 9 a.m. and followed a six-mile route from Harlem to Herald Square, according to History.
The first Macy’s parade’s floats featured characters from popular nursery rhymes which matched the Christmas display at Macy’s flagship store. The rhymes featured were the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, Little Miss Muffet and Little Red Riding Hood, according to History.
Live animals from the Central Park Zoo were used on floats in the early parades and the first balloon wasn’t used until 1927, when Felix the Cat made it’s debut.
Macy’s parade history: Key facts from Christmas, Thanksgiving Day parades
The first Mickey Mouse balloon came out of a partnership with Macy’s and Walt Disney in 1934.
The Macy’s Parade didn’t reach national TV screens until 1947 and in the 1940’s all balloons were deflated and donated to help with World War II rubber supplies.
Although this year’s floats will feature Baby Yoda and popular Disney characters, Snoopy is the parade character with the most balloons in the parade’s history.
But was the Macy’s Parade ever canceled? World War II halted the parade celebrations in 1942, 1943 and 1944.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world and most events, the Macy’s Day Parade continued just without a live audience.
