It is held every year and was first organized in 1924. The three-hour parade takes place in Manhattan and ends in front of Macy’s Herald Square. It takes place from 9 am to 12 pm and has been televised nationally on NBC since 1953. More than 44 million people watch the parade on television, and several million watch it in person. The parade has featured balloons depicting mostly cartoon characters since 1927. The most frequent character in the history of the parade has been the dog Snoopy.
In 2023, the parade started half an hour early, at 8:30 am, making it the first to start earlier in almost a century. Above, actress Sheryl Lee Ralph was the first celebrity and the first black person to play Mrs. Santa Claus in the history of the parade. There also happened to be three disruptions of the parade by pro-Palestinian protesters (related to the Israeli-Palestinian war).
