The first Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade had Santa Claus climbing the Gimbels’ fire ladder

Thanksgiving Day, 1920 was a cold, dark, and rainy day in Philadelphia. City dwellers went to church under the cover of black umbrellas and hundreds flocked to Franklin Field to watch University of Pennsylvania beat Cornell in football.

But Ellis A. Gimbel, one of the founders of Gimbels Department Store, quietly started a new tradition that would go on to mark the official start of the holiday shopping season. Gimbel enlisted 50 of his store’s employees to dress like Santa’s elves and drive brand new Model Ts down Market Street ushering Santa Claus into town.

Then when Kriss Kringle arrived at Gimbels’ 9th and Market Street entrance, he climbed a fire ladder to an eighth floor window and hoisted himself into Toyland. Here, Philadelphia’s little ones would take turns sitting on jolly old Santa’s lap, whispering Christmas wishes into his ear through Christmas Eve.

That parade — which through the years would also be called Uncle Wip’s Annual Toyland Parade — was America’s first ever Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The time-honored celebration will be feted Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. The party is the Philadelphia Historic District’s 45th firstival. Firstivals are weekly day parties honoring stalwart American traditions with strong Philadelphia roots during America’s 250th birthday year.

In its early years, Gimbels’ Thanksgiving Day Parades marched along Market Street with little to no fanfare, explained Todd Marcocci, co-producer of the The 6ABC Dunkin’ Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In fact, the first advertisement for it didn’t appear in The Philadelphia Inquirer until 1925, a year after R.H. Macy’s introduced his store’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York.

That was the first year The Inquirer covered the festivities, too.

“Thousands of children enthusiastically cheered and abetted” Santa Claus, read an article in The Inquirer which also reported the inclusion of nursery rhyme characters Little Red Riding Hood, Raggedy Ann, and Peter the Pumpkin Eater as they walked the route starting at 21st and Spring Garden, wound their way around City Hall, and ended at Gimbels.

According to the 1925 article, then Philadelphia Mayor Freeland Kendrick and Sen. George W. Pepper joined Ellis Gimbel and his wife, Minnie, on the sidelines.

Each year, attendance swelled as Gimbel invited more children, including orphans and the blind, to the festivities. His motto: Not one child in Philadelphia should be hungry or unhappy on Christmas Day. It also became custom for Santa to receive a key to the city before hoisting himself up the engine ladder.

Adam Gimbel, Ellis’ father, was a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria who started the Gimbel empire with a general store in Indiana in 1842. Ellis was born in 1865 in Indiana and moved with his family to Philadelphia as an infant. He and his six brothers purchased the lot on 9th and Market Street and opened the flagship Gimbels on the East Coast in 1894.

The Gimbel brothers opened their New York store in 1910, starting a fierce competition with R.H. Macy’s. Ellis stayed on in Philadelphia.

In 1936, Ellis — an 1883 graduate of Central High School — became chairman of Gimbels board. He died in 1950; a two-page obituary in The Inquirer referred to him as the leading member of Philadelphia’s “happiness cabinet.”

Gimbels’ Thanksgiving Day Parade turned 50 in 1969 and, by then, had grown to 5,000 participants with more than 110 floats and 31 bands. “Hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians jammed the streets” to see the festivities, according to an Inquirer article written that year.

Rains and high winds was the reason for the parade’s first cancellation in 1971.

In 1982, the parade dropped Gimbels from its moniker and became the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Allied Stores bought Gimbels in 1986 converting the department store at 9th and Market Streets to Stern’s. Allied didn’t want to pay the roughly-$200,000 it cost to put on the parade. 6ABC, the ABC-owned Philadelphia TV station, stepped in as the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade’s new sponsor. In 1996, the Walt Disney Co. acquired ABC and started producing the parade. Dunkin’ Donuts started collaborating with 6ABC in 2011.

Philadelphia’s official Thanksgiving Day Parade came to be known as the 6ABC Dunkin’ Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In 2020, the parade’s 100th birthday year, it was canceled for only the second time in its 106-year history, due to COVID. This year it’s expected to attract more than half a million spectators.

The 6ABC news team will host including Rick Williams and Alicia Vitarelli. Special guests include Quinta Brunson from Abbott Elementary; Jeopardy’s Ken Jennings; and Wheel of Fortune’s Ryan Seacrest. Plus, performances from Ensemble Arts Philadelphia productions: Waitress, Hell’s Kitchen and The Who’s Tommy.

This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Nov. 7, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m., at Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, 101 S. Independence Mall East

Each week, The Inquirer is highlighting a “first” from the Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts. A “52 Weeks of Firsts” podcast, produced by All That’s Good Productions, drops every Tuesday.