Snoopy flies past apartments on Central Park West. A Snoopy balloon has flown in the Macy’s parade more times than any other character.

With our captain, Patty, who walked beside us the whole way down.

About 75 people are assigned to each balloon. If the weather is bad, they don’t all show up. But November 26, 2015, which happens to be Sparky’s birthday, was a beautiful day and it seemed like all 75 showed up. There weren’t enough “bones” for each of us.

Donovan and I shared a bone, as did the two young men to my left. Even though Snoopy is tethered to a motorized cart, the ropes which we are all holding do the ‘fine tuning’ during the march.

Marching down 6th Avenue towards Herald Square.

Macy’s treats its sponsors to a festive pre-parade gathering at the Museum of Natural History. The inflated balloons are on the streets of either side of the Museum under netting, which will be removed in the morning. It’s almost a Thanksgiving ritual for people to come and visit the balloons. There was very high security this year with seemingly hundreds of policemen visible.

I’m covering up the characters I don’t want to see on this huge blow-up of a Macy’s poster.

Macy’s is featuring Peanuts Christmas windows in New York and a number of other cities across the country.

Outside Macy’s in New York City. It was early in the morning, so I could get the whole scene. This is the entrance on Broadway.

 

Here is a close-up of the Charlie Brown window. The windows have both voice and animation, but the action wasn’t turned on yet because we were there too early in the morning.

Macy’s Chicago windows feature an animated snow scene.

The window decorations in Macy’s Salt Lake City are made with candy!

 

The windows in San Francisco feature puppies and kittens up for adoption.

 

It was just the corner windows that featured adoptable pets. This is the other major scene.

–Jean Schulz