For the last 36 years I have watched from afar. It still dazzles. But as a child growing up in Brooklyn in the mid to late ‘50s, the anticipation of the subway ride into Manhattan with my father to watch in person was a source of overwhelming joy. I can almost taste the steaming hot cocoa he would always buy for me on our way to look for the “best spot.” Thanks so much for the memories these amazing photos brought to life.
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Although I dabbled in photography when I was younger, I could never quite get the hang of human subjects — which is why I preferred macro, & extremely magnified imagery, experimenting with huge magnifying lenses taped onto the front of the main zoom lens — mainly because I wasn’t quick enough on the shutter button. These parades subjects though, provide ‘like fish in a barrel’ easy to capture subject matter for obvious reasons.... mouths agape, eyes focused in earnest..... I probably would’ve taken pictures of the ropes wrapped around the stressed, turning-blue hands of the float-walkers, or something not so obvious. Merry black widow day
The sort of piece this natve New Yorker likes to read. More, please. Good job, John.
8
The pictures are wonderful. I wish that you omitted the writing. The first paragraph isn't funny, it merely contains negativity and insults.
7
The kids on the phone booths... that’s my America, right there. Happy Thanksgiving.
22
On a snowy day in January1961 my parents walked from their apartment at 405 E 63rd st to New York Hospital for me to be induced. My mother went into labor on their walk and had me 10 minutes after entering the hospital. My parents told me that true New Yorkers didn’t go to the Macy Day Parade. They watched from their comfort of their homes drinking hot chocolate. And after the parade was over you watched Miracle on 34th st. They told me you stood in a wind tunnel, and their were pick pockets. Later during my childhood I over heard them telling friends that they had taken my older brother and sister once and it was too cold and crowded. We moved to San Francisco when I was 11 and they also never took me to the Empire State bldg. But unfailingly they sent me every year with friends to look at Christmas windows in the freezing cold even though we celebrated Hanukkah.
5
We watched the parade this morning, first time, and it was fabulous! Everyone, kids and adults, were delighted.
3
Such beautiful photos of smiling children, the true promise of America. Thank you for making my day.
5
Great pictures! I love that NY Times is digitizing its photo archives and giving them new life.
Also nice to see crowds of kids and adults looking on in wonder and not just a sea of people holding their phones aloft trying to capture the moment rather than just enjoying it,
20
Yes, this Midwesterner watched the “Macy’s Parade” every year, including today. The photo essay is wonderful. I especially enjoy the vista shots of NYC streetscapes, bold buildings, humble store signage, and sooo many people. The city seemed magical. It still is.
6
Our child grew up without TV, but his aunts and uncles would always tape the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for him (and us, too). It's hard to imagine a better parade.
If we could just remember the children the rest of the year, maybe we would all be better behaved, and life would become its own parade, about which we could all be proud.
4
The 1970's pictures especially remind me of my childhood, and how America was a rougher and much less affluent place back then. Thanks for sharing them.
8
Beautiful images! Too bad CBS has turned their coverage of the parade into a giant infomercial for various sponsors. Thanks NYT for the reminder that this is an event for kids of all ages, not just another opportunity for selling ya stuff.
16
Beautiful pictures, captures the spirt so wonderfully! thank you for the miracle on the 34th Street!
7
Struggling to have a child all through the '80s, we succeeded in 1987 and happily took our daughter to her first parade in November at the age of seven months. I remember seeing Snoopy for the first time and that it was very cold. We lived on the upper west side and gathered will the crowds to see the balloons blown up the night before the parade just a few blocks from our house. Moved to Massachusetts in the spring of 1988 so that was our last in person parade view.
5
Such lovely, gorgeous pictures! I especially love the pictures of my fellow Gen Xers in the 1970s. So much magic on their faces !
As a native NYer (Queens), I hope that one day I will get to see the parade in person.
5
The New York Times photo journalist who took these photos were such artists. Love the ethos in the black and white photos of the children who participated in the joy of the day.
17
Wonderful pictures! I keep thinking of "Miracle on 34th Street".
8
Wonderful photos. Thank you.
11
Racial considerations and context pervade all eras of our American history. It's sad, unfortunate, horrible reality.
It will be so until it isn't so to put it simply.
It's OK to look at this parade as just a parade.
I would like to know more about the
"holiday's thorny racial history."
Can readers inform us?
1
@Paul King White Europeans came to a new land that was already occupied (for thousands of years) by people who helped those new arrivals survive their first winters. Those native Americans (who, you'll recall, didn't have white skin) and their progeny through the generations were thanked for their hospitality with blankets covered in Small Pox, slaughtered, and were forced off their land and essentially warehoused on reservations that still to this day our government is trying to take back (see the Dakota Pipeline for example) as treaties were signed and then reneged on by that White government over and over again.
That's a pretty "thorny racial history" I'd say....
8
Growing up in the middle of Illinois, I watched the parade in black and white on a small aqua TV, and was still enchanted. One lucky Thanksgiving when I was about 7 (1962) we visited my grandparents who lived on Gramercy Park. My grandfather, uncle, Dad and I bundled up and walked to parade route where I watched in awe the parade I loved. Years later, as a newlywed, my husband and I walked from our studio on east 31st to the parade. The magic was still there, but nothing beats seeing it as a 7 year old!
Today I have the honor of being a member of the all volunteer, nearly 1000 strong, Tournament of Roses in my new home of Pasadena. Once a parade lover always a parade lover!
Happy Thanksgiving!
21
The photos from 1987/1992 were surely shot in color. Why must we revert to black and white for any photo to make it more historical?
The NYTimes did Not publish color in the daily edition until 1997. Enjoy the images. Happy Thanksgiving.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/14/nyregion/the-times-is-adding-weekday-sections-and-color.html
22
Love the tribute! Such photography - especially in "living B&W". Happy Thanksgiving America! God bless us all.
5
Today, rightfully, it should be the Amazon Thanksgiving Day Parade. Instead of giant cute balloons, huge pythons and water snakes could slither down Broadway swallowing whole everything on each side of the street while onlooking children squeal with delight.
8
@John Doe What a buzz kill.
2
Your delicious sarcasm has made my Thanksgiving Day!
1
@John Doe Can’t you give it up for just one day? What is 1 day out of 365? Sheesh.
6
Every year I have high hopes that the parade will actually be shown rather than the non-stop shilling that occurs. Every year I get mad at NBC's "coverage" of the parade. Last year and this one my quest for real parade video coverage has been answered via YouTube as they do a live-stream of the parade and in 360° ! Nice.
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@randyr
Thanks for the viewing tip!
18
The freezing street spectators stand with gaps of 4 - 5 minutes staring at nothing. Why? To account for the acts (promos for artists and B'way shows) that aren't in the parade at all, and commercials which make NBC a fortune. The spectators are extras in a highly profitable TV show.
Happy Thanksgiving from your Macy's Parade Grinch.
20
The innocence and happiness of the kids in every photo is priceless.
32
I quickly scanned through the picture to find reminders of the Thanksgivings in the 60s when my Dad and my Uncle would take my sisters, brother and cousins and I to see the parade while Mom and my Aunt stayed home and cooked. Disappointed to not find any from my Thanksgiving Day memories. But still nice to see some history of the parades.
9
Pictures like these always make me very nostalgic for wool coats. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
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@Pam, especially those saturated with cigarette and cigar smoke. The thought of which makes me only sicker than how I know I’ll feel if I were to actually eat what I’m cooking for everybody coming over today. Thanksgiving is was tradition worth losing, that’s for sure. It’s an embarrassment of waste and testament to why the planet is dying.
2
@Pam. Those wool coats bring me back to the day I first went out in the freezing cold in a down jacket instead. Never would ever go back
3
OK, I just lauded you for delicious sarcasm on the Amazon comment above.
Then I just read this junk about jettisoning Thanksgiving. And that the planet is dying.
We may be horribly treating and polluting the planet, but NEWS FLASH: Homo Sapiens will be long extinct before the planet goes.
And if we were to blow it all up, the planet will renew itself without us and new species will evolve.
The planet has another 16 billion years, give or take, before being subsumed by an enlarged red sun.
3
Tradition,Tradition.Racial historical tradition is nonsense
How can these pictures be “vintage”? Vintage denotes “old,” and I was around when many of these pictures were taken!
Oh, wait a minute... dang...
73
@ERT I am afraid I had the same reaction, and yet, I am still the kid wanting to see the Floats and Balloons, Please!
And the joy of seeing Happy Kids, normal folks in those times, and changes since. Rubber baby buggy bumpers and fenders even with white rubber tires.
17
New York and Macy you do America proud with this absolutely wonderful, magical parade that unites us all. One hundred years of a tradition for children and young at heart adults too! I have never, ever missed a parade which reminds me to check my TV listings right now.
My entire childhood was spent Thanksgiving morning in front of the TV with hot cocoa and the roasting smell of turkey. I knew the next childhood day of splendor was just a month away at Christmas time. Back then the tree went up a week before Christmas and no sooner. In fact when I was a toddler it went up traditionally on Christmas Eve.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL NYT STAFF AND NEW YORKERS!
33
Thanks for bringing back, on this Thanksgiving Day, all the charm and wonder of the parade through these old photos. I've tried to watch it in recent years, but so much of its simple beauty has been lost. Like most things today, the NBC-televised spectacle now seems to be over-commercialized, over-produced, and over-done. BUT, kudos to Macy's and its employees for their enduring gift to NYC and kids of all ages in the US, who grew up watching the parade, as moms worked in the kitchen and the house began to fill with the intoxicating scents of the holidays.
27
I grew up on the UWS of old.
The Macy's Day Parade, as I called it, was just another local event in my neighborhood as far as I was concerned.
The balloons got inflated down the street from PS 87 where I went to elementary school.
I have great memories of walking the few blocks from our apartment to 72nd Street and CPW, my dad, who was 6'5", threw me up on his shoulders and I had the best view in the world!
54
Thanks for the photo of ME holding the Kermit balloon circa 1979.
Macy employees (and their friends and family) have the opportunity to be part of THE parade and I was lucky enough to participate three times. Great fun
NY is the greatest city in the world!
Happy Thanksgiving from Texas!
62
Thanks for these wonderful photos! As a child, I called it the Macy's Day Parade, and begged my reluctant parents to take me. (TVs were somewhat rare then, and we didn't have one.) They eventually consented, but I was too small to see very much, and it was very cold and windy that day. Dad hoisted me on his shoulders for a bit. A never-to-be-forgotten thrill I'm sorry my kids couldn't experience, since we no longer live in New York.
18
The article's writer gives a good impression of being a younger person without much experience, in life. The over-analyzing, made-up puzzlement about "what it's about" reads like so much fluff or space-filler, which perhaps it is. Instead of repeating the mistake so many make about photography & pictures - look into them, not at them. You'll see kids of all ages letting themselves absorb a moment of just happiness, at being "in the moment"...young children for the first time, everyone else back in that "first time". It's a parade, the biggest and best parade...it doesn't need defining or analyzing or "race- or age-identifying", everyone who enjoys it just recognizes it in a basic way, a feeling of closing of the year coming, yet excitement of a changing season...basic, needs no description. Just look at the eyes in those photos, forget the race/gender/age...just see people happy, enjoying, in a moment of wonderment. That's all it is, which is everything good.
25
I love seeing the mixture of ethnicities in the faces of those mesmerized children, so hopeful.
It's hard to believe that Civil Rights had yet to come to the fore and that nearly 70 years later we would still be consumed by racial animus throughout the country and that it would infect even our White House.
41
I remember as a kid watching movies like Miracle on 34th Street and thinking how cool it would be to live in NYC, see Santa Claus at Macy's and watch the big parade. It gave me just a glimpse of the excitement and sophistication of the big city.
Little did I know that half the country was watching it with brewing resentment for those east coast liberals and years later they would get their revenge.
15
@Tom J
lmao.
thx Tom for a full on belly laugh.
needed it
HT
3
At 55 and a longtime expat, I must be getting tender-hearted. These black and white images of floats and smiles make me long for simpler times and hope that kids today will watch the parade with as much wonder in their eyes.
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