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Set to take place on Thanksgiving morning 100 years ago, the first Macy’s Parade promised to be a magnificent affair.

A newspaper ad in the Brooklyn Eagle placed by R.H. Macy & Co. announced the new event: “A giant Christmas parade will be held in Manhattan in which Santa Claus, accompanied by an array of wild animals, bareback riders, bands and clowns, will come ... to Macy’s store. There the elaborate Christmas spectacle will take place.”

The newspaper ad worked.

On that Thanksgiving morning in 1924, a crowd of nearly 10,000, according to police estimates, waited outside the Macy’s flagship store on West 34th Street to witness the arrival of live bears and elephants, floats depicting nursery rhyme characters Little Miss Muffet and Red Riding Hood, and jolly old St. Nick sounding a trumpet to herald the unveiling of Macy’s department store’s ornate Christmas window display.

And thus, the Macy’s Christmas Parade - renamed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade two years later - started its legendary run.

While 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of this now iconic annual event, it will only be the 98th time the parade has taken place. The parade was suspended from 1942-1944 in order to conserve materials for World War II. Two million spectators turned out for the parade’s return in 1945, according to news reports.