Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks for family, friends, and the bounty of food that this good Earth pushes out of its belly each year for us. It’s also a day, for hundreds of thousands in the country’s most populous city, to stand beneath gigantic 450-pound balloons, hoping the wind doesn’t blow the wrong way.
Like stock car races or primary debates, balloon parades are an alleged form of entertainment that's mostly just boring until something goes wrong. Fortunately, with balloon accidents the resulting injuries are primarily psychic in nature—measured in months of therapy for poor Jacob after seeing Pikachu disemboweled by a lamppost—making them much more fun to watch.
[Balloons will not fly at the 87th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York if sustained winds exceed 23 mph and gusts top 34 mph. Snoopy's inflation will be decided early Thursday morning by the NYPD, the National Weather Service, and Macy's. Photo by Bebeto Matthews via AP]
What is Thanksgiving all about? It's about ringing in the season of conspicuous consumerism we call Christmas, right? So what better way to celebrate that than with a department store sponsored holiday tradition: The Macy's Thanksgiving balloons.
