The sun was shining, the balloons were aloft and kaleidoscope floats rolled down city streets, accompanied by a sound track of marching bands and cheers from bedazzled spectators.

This Thanksgiving fest didn’t take place amid the canyons of Manhattan. This parade snaked from East Orange to downtown Newark, home of the flagship Bamberger’s department store.

Eighty years ago, the Market Street march made its debut and the tradition continued through 1957, drawing crowds that topped 600,000 when the weather complied. Although Bamberger’s was owned by Macy’s, the Garden State retailer kept its autonomy on turkey day.

As hype builds for the New York spectacle Thursday morning, some folks are feeling nostalgic for Newark’s forgotten fantasia.

"It was a beautiful parade," says Catherine Reynolds, 81, of Roseland. Her late aunt, Geraldyne Gardner was a Bamberger’s cosmetologist who rode a float as snow queen pre-WWII. "In New Jersey, Newark was the place for the parade. I never even heard of Macy’s growing up."

During the Bamberger’s boom years, New Jersey occasionally outshined New York on Thanksgiving.

The Santa sled in the 1947 Christmas classic, "Miracle on 34th Street" was actually on loan from Newark. The film also featured a patriotic postwar eagle float made in New Jersey.

Both got trucked across the George Washington Bridge for the movie shoot, according to the Newark Evening News.

Over the years, Jersey crowds applauded such celebrities as Abbott & Costello, Guy Lombardo, Walter Winchell, Janet Leigh, Emmett Kelly, Morey Amsterdam and Rin Tin Tin.

In 1955, Newark glimmered on Thanksgiving Eve, as Bamberger’s pioneered a whole new style of parade for an international broadcast on CBS and the Voice of America network.

Advertised as the "world’s first Thanksgiving Eve parade in black light," the night walk showcased rolling panoramas illuminated with flashing incandescent and ultraviolet bulbs.

Street lamps were switched off to enhance the drama of the glow floats, created with a little help from General Electric. The procession included an ice cream mountain, a Cinderella montage, a phantasmagoric turkey, a flying carpet piloted by actor William Bendix and a Santa sleigh strewn with Christmas lights.

The Bamberger's "blackout" enchanted viewers but also caused "one of the worst vehicular tie-ups in the city's history," according to the Newark Evening News.

Father Christmas himself couldn't escape the gridlock, The Star-Ledger reported. A Santa impersonator named Lucky S. Squire was stranded in his red suit because he locked his keys in his, er, gas-powered sled.

"The roly-poly figure was just another pedestrian to some half a million spectators who dashed for cars and buses," according to The Star-Ledger article. Police helped St. Nick unlock his vehicle.

The event moved to Weequahic Park in 1956, where the blinking behemoths circled around a trotting track. After two years at the park, however, Bamberger’s stepped out of the parade picture.

In 1958, Bamberger's pulled the plug on the parade. According to a Newark Evening News story, attendance declined as Jerseyans were gathering around television sets instead of packing the park.

In 1986, Bamberger’s branches were rebranded as Macy’s and in 1992, the Newark store closed for good.

The birthplace of the Thanksgiving parade tradition is not New York but Philadelphia. In 1920, Gimbels employees dressed as clowns and capered down the street to herald the arrival of the Christmas shopping season. Four years later, Macy’s introduced its own holiday festivities in Manhattan. Hudson’s in Detroit also debuted a parade in 1924. Philly and Detroit continue to present their own Thanksgiving celebrations.

The inaugural Newark event in 1931 was a five-mile strut with masquerading buccaneers, ventriloquists, courtiers, gunslingers, a cat herd, a 100-foot dragon and, of course, Santa.

There were some technical difficulties with the leading balloon, a 50-foot figure named Major.

According to newspaper reports, the helium colossus "became so invigorated by the crisp Thanksgiving day that he soared off long before the procession reached the store. He came to grief in Van Buren Street, was deflated and was flat on his back in the store when the excitement was at its height outside."

In 1933, Bamberger’s puppeteer Tony Sarg designed a menagerie of inflated animals wired to "talk." The oversized creatures gobbled, growled, quacked and oinked loud enough to be heard for a half-mile.

The Newark Evening News ran a preview with the headline, "Twelve-Foot Duck Will Lay Egg in Street During Weird Parade."

During the 1940’s, the storybook stroll featured floats inspired by Mother Goose, Long John Silver and Donald Duck, seated in a rocking chair with a duckling on his lap. A massive Peter Rabbit wiggled its ears and bit "the largest carrot in existence," according to the Newark Evening News.

When Reynolds watches Thanksgiving balloons soar over New York on TV each year, she gets wistful, remembering a time when Newark held its own as a holiday hub.

"It was the place," says Reynolds. "Nobody needed Macy’s because we had Bamberger’s. If you lived in New Jersey, you came to Newark for the parade and to shop."

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