Do I or don’t I watch this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV? I may be one of the few people in America for whom this is an emotionally fraught question.
I’ve seen every parade, live and in person, ever since I was born. And I was born an increasingly long time ago. Let me put it this way: when those giant balloons marched past our apartment window during my first parade I was five months old and the parade only 29. This year it’s 95. You do the math.
Mickey Mouse, Superman and Donald Duck were the stars of the show back then. Popeye, Bullwinkle and Underdog had yet to make their way through Manhattan’s canyons. Snoopy, Kermit the Frog, Ronald McDonald and Barney weren’t even a glimmer in someone’s eye.
Not to harp on my age but you know you’re not a kid any more – not that I remained under any illusion that I was -- when you don’t even recognize some of the balloons, let alone the celebrities on the floats.
This year’s balloons include Luz from the Owl House and Eep and Bearowl. And the celebrities Natasha Bedingfield, Ciara and NCT 127. I have no idea who they are, either.
The reason I won’t be watching the parade in person is because my mother passed away this year and with her the apartment overlooking the parade route. When the average person seeks to buy or rent an apartment they’re concerned about things like size, amenities, ceiling heights. My mother’s non-negotiable demand was that her home always be on the route of Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Interest in the parade ebbed and flowed depending on my age and eventually those of my children as well as siblings, friends and relatives who crowded by the fifth floor windows to view the floats and marching bands.
I never considered sleeping in. Not even during the counterculture Sixties when I was an adolescent and I assume I must have cast an age and era appropriate jaundiced eye on the orgy of branding and promotional opportunities that marks the event’s genius.
Also, it was a question of responsibility and commitment. The parade served as a through line for our family’s story. Ironically, my mother rarely watched the parade. She was a night person and 9 a.m. constituted the crack of dawn. Also, she refused to greet guests without her make-up on.
The parade reclaimed some of its relevance starting in the Eighties when I invented a game – I believe it was me and even if it wasn’t I’m taking full credit for it – where several of us would lean out the window and fiercely scream the name of a passing celebrity, hoping to attract his or her attention and a wave.
In this way we secured recognition from the likes of Diana Ross, Jimmy Fallon, Placido Domingo, Kristen Chenoweth, Tony Bennett, Rudy Giuliani, former Yankees manager Joe Torre, Florence Henderson, Shari Lewis of “Lambchop” fame and one of my proudest “gets” – Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner.
I’d done a phone interview with the beauty pageant winner about her excitement about being in the parade and exacted a promise to look up and wave when she passed under our window. And she did.
If Ms. Conner’s name rings a bell it’s perhaps because she became mired in controversy shortly after the parade. Look up the nature of her indiscretions if you like. However, Donald Trump, the pageant’s owner, nobly allowed her to retain her title.
Come to think of it why hasn’t Donald Trump, over all these years of being the prototypical New York celebrity, never appeared in the parade? My wife thinks it’s fear over the havoc the wind would reap on his hair.
I read there’s a petition afoot to include the Trump Baby balloon in the parade. But that’s not going to happen. Macy’s isn’t going to do anything to alienate even a single holiday shopper.
I’ll be upstate for this year’s parade. I can’t say I’m disappointed. Six decades was a pretty good run.
Also, celebrating Thanksgiving in the country, in nature, feels somehow more appropriate, more in keeping with the history and spirit of the holiday. My recollection is that Thanksgiving started with the pilgrims, inviting their Native American neighbors to join them as a way of giving thanks for a good harvest.
My daughter Gracie and boyfriend Henry, both professional chefs, will update the pilgrims’ feast by roasting a pasture-raised turkey with sage, onion, dried cherries, celery and white wine stuffing. There’s also cranberry compote, biscuits with honey butter, an endive, escarole, radicchio and buttermilk salad, and five desserts.
I’m also anticipating a walk in the woods, hunting season notwithstanding.
I suspect I won’t be able to resist turning on the parade and will undoubtedly grow wistful as it passes below our former windows.
But not overly so. Nothing lasts forever. And among the many reasons to offer thanks on that day will be to have lived in a society stable and prosperous enough across the decades that you could build an appetite for the annual feast accompanied by balloons the size of buildings and by shouting out your lungs at passing stars.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found at ralphgardner.com
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