Macy’s Parade Is Back This Thanksgiving, Without Kids on Floats
The New York Times
The tradition has been largely restored, but children under 12 years old will not be allowed in the parade — only as spectators.
As the coronavirus surged in New York City last year, the typical fanfare of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was downsized: The route shrank to one block, the number of participants was cut by several thousand people and the public was told to stay home.
It could hardly be called a parade at all. There wasn’t so much a procession as a series of struts down the runway for the television cameras. The broadcast was filmed over three days and edited to give the impression of a seamless three-hour program.
This year, with the city reporting that more than 80 percent of adults are fully vaccinated, the parade is expected to return with all its helium-filled pomp and corporate-branded holiday cheer — with an asterisk: children under 12 will not be allowed to participate in the parade itself. They will, however, be allowed as spectators along the two-and-a-half-mile parade route, as well as at the ceremonial inflation of the balloons on Wednesday afternoon around the American Museum of Natural History.
