The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: November twenty-second, strutting proudly down Broadway.

During the early 20th century, many employees of R. H. Macy's department store on Herald Square in New York were first generation immigrants. In 1924, proud of their new country, they decided to borrow a European tradition to celebrate an American holiday. On Thanksgiving Day hundreds of them gathered in a lot on 145th Street, costumed as clowns, cowboys, knights, sheiks and one Santa Claus. Amid floats, brass bands and 25 animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo, they marched down Broadway to Macy's at 34th Street, delighting the thousands of folks who lined the route. The parade quickly became an annual New York tradition.

The first large balloon, Felix the Cat, debuted in 1927, and others were added of the years. For the first six years, balloons were released at the parade's end and would float for days. People who eventually found them could claim prizes. Throughout the Depression, Santa's arrival at Macy's signaled the start of the Christmas shopping season. In 1938, radio broadcast the star-studded festivities to millions of listeners. In 1948, the parade was telecast locally for the first time, and in the 50's it went national.

Except for three years during World War Two, there's been a parade every Thanksgiving Day since, even the dark November of 1963 barely a week after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And today, despite the trauma New York City and the entire country has endured since Sept 11, the 75th Macy's Thanksgiving Parade marches down Broadway, a peacock proud procession and reflection of the times through which it passes.

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