Hudson’s & the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade

Posted on by farlane
Hudson's Santa at the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade

Hudson’s Santa at the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade

Happy Black Friday! It’s an especially happy one for many since for the first time in eight years, we aren’t mourning a Lions Thanksgiving loss!! Yesterday Detroit also hosted another successful Thanksgiving Day Parade on Woodward Avenue (click for some video highlights) which got me thinking about the roots of this holiday tradition.

Thanksgiving parades were created in the early 20th Century by big department store chains to signal consumers that it was time to start thinking about Christmas shopping. The Holidays at Hudson’s video on Detroit PBS explains that the Motor City was no exception. Hudson’s Department Store provided the staff, resources to help launch the annual parade in 1924. A century later, the Parade remains one of the largest in the country.

While you have to donate to view the whole video, the trailer for Holidays at Hudson’s has some great pics & info. One cool fact is that at its apex when a quarter of a million children a year would visit Santa every year at Hudson’s, they were one of the first stores in the country to offer a choice of Caucasian, Black, Hispanic or other Santas. I’ve got a some old pics, a couple parade photos & a video of the Big Heads below!

Hudson’s Float in front of the new Hudson’s by Andrew McFarlane

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6 thoughts on “Hudson’s & the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade”

  2. i think OUR parade is just as famous as the Macy’s parade. We had better weather too.
    I didn’t know there were that many of the “big heads” – yesterday they worried it might be too damp and they could not bring the paper mache heads out then. Thanks for the pictures because I had heard about the special Hudson’s float commemorating 100 years since the original J.L. Hudson’s opened.

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    1. You’re welcome! The weather was amazing & I probably should have put my foot in it for Detroit! It seems like they are actually sealed with a resin. I am 1000% going to try and do a feature on these.

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      1. Yes it was great weather. I’m a walker, so I appreciate every good weather day. You should take one of the tours where you go behind the scenes and see the parade storage area with the big heads “at rest”. I think that would be a fun thing for you to do and photograph.

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