Macy's thanksgiving ad parade

Now that we’ve finally attended our first ever Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (see photographic evidence at left), we thought we’d finally be able to knowledgeably answer the question of whether the parade is an endearing holiday tradition or the ghastly opening salvo to another hugely commercial Christmas season.
But our feelings were decidedly mixed. On the one hand, it’s always unnerving to find that your offspring have an encyclopedic knowledge of characters from cartoons you never even knew they watched, but on the other hand the balloons, many of which are heavily bandaged after years of running into skyscrapers, bitter Thanksgiving winds and New York City lampposts, have this surprisingly homemade quality, like someone’s wacky uncle dreamt them up in his garage.