Frankly, we’ve gotten lazy about going to the Thanksgiving Parade. Too cold, too much of a schlep from Brooklyn, too early. We don’t even watch it on TV anymore.

And it ain’t what it used to be. So commercial, so glitzy, so…different. But what isn’t? This year they’re adding Dora the Explorere and Scooby Doo. Artist Tom Otterness has
created a 33-foot-tall Humpty Dumpty, frowning mid-"great fall."  As usual,  the parade route begins at 77th Street and Central Park West, proceeds to Columbus Circle, and turns onto Broadway. It turns west on 34th Street (just past Macy’s Herald Square) and finishes at Seventh Avenue.

Back when we aspired be the ultimate New York parents, the parade was a must-do activity. When my son was 3, we all bundled up and stood under a Broadway marquis on a freezing cold day. Friends brought a thermos of hot chocolate and it felt like the most essential New York childhood experience of all.

For a few years, my cousin rented a hotel room on the 5th floor of the Central Park’s Mayflower Hotel, which provided a perfect, indoor spot for viewing the balloons. To watch the parade from indoors is one of the great luxuries of New York City life. A real perk. One windy year, we watched a ballon deflate before our eyes after it rammed into a lamp post.

When my sister lived across the street from the Museum of Natural History, she invited Son and Daughter (who was only 2 at the time) to sleep over so they could watch the blowing up of the balloons the night before the parade, one of those great New York traditions. So great, that it’s almost as popular as the parade itself and unbearably crowded.

My childhood memories of the parade are vivid. When I was a kid, I remember being bundled in a snowsuit on freezing cold Thanksgiving mornings and standing out on Central Park West too short to see the parade.

In fourth grade, a classmate invited a group of girls over to her 77th Street duplex for a sleepover. Her parents took us out in the middle of the night to watch the balloons – Underdog and Mickey Mouse being blown up on 77th Street. This was before it was a popular activity. back then, it was strictly for residents of 77th Street and 81st Street. How special we felt walking outside in our nightgowns and overcoats beneath a crystal clear night sky.

The next morning we were out early watching the parade in full swing. The foot of one of the balloons nearly touched my friend’s little brother’s head as he sat on his father’s shoulders.

I asked my sister if she has plans to take her 15 month old daughter into Manhattan for her first parade. "Not this year," she said. They’ll probably take her next year when Ducky is two. She can sit on her daddy’s shoulders and watch the enormous balloons up above.

It’s a New York tradition she won’t want to miss.