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Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Thanksgiving (originally a harvest festival) is celebrated across the United States as families get together and feast on huge helpings of roast turkey. Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade is one of the Big Apple’s most dynamic and colourful events that takes the celebrations one stage further. Its origins date back to the 1920s when the city’s European immigrants decided to celebrate the American Thanksgiving Day holiday with the sort of festivities they had known in their homelands. Hundreds of people marched from 145th Street to 34th Street in costume; accompanied by floats, live animals (on loan from the zoo) and musicians. The parade attracted over 250,000 spectators and quickly became an institution. Today the colourful parade features clowns and marching bands, but the biggest attraction are the Floats and Falloons (a Macy's hybrid of a cold air balloon and float) that tower over the crowds; they usually include Angelina Ballerina, The Statue of Liberty and of course, the man of the season, Santa Claus on his sleigh. The parade starts on 77th Street and proceeds down Central Park West to Columbus Circle, then down Broadway to Macy's at 34th St, finishing on Seventh Ave. Good places to watch it include Times Square and Columbus Circle, but get there early as by the afternoon the crowds are thick.

Date: 26 November 2009
Time: 9am to 12pm
Website: www.macysparade.com