For most New Yorkers, Thanksgiving is a day of celebration, a day to spend time with family — and, perhaps most importantly — a day off of work.
For others, however, this is the busiest day of their year — when rest isn’t even close to being part of the equation.
As you tuck into your annual turkey, take some time to appreciate a trio of tireless Big Apple heroes, who inhabit three very different worlds within New York — each of them hitting the ground running over the holiday, keeping the city warm, fed and full of holiday cheer.
Yes to the dress
As costume director for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Kimberly Montgomery’s morning on the fourth Thursday in November starts hours ahead of almost everyone else’s.
She wakes up at 2.30 a.m., already riding a wave of adrenaline as she prepares to oversee the dressing of 4,000 parade participants.
“We have 2,000 balloon handlers, 750 clowns, about 300 float escorts, about 100 costumed characters, 300 children, 500 people in officials’ jackets, and the dance teams,” Montgomery told The Post ahead of the 2025 extravaganza.
Far from being frazzled, the costume commando is a seasoned pro, having worked the parade every year since 2000.
“From the minute I stepped into that job I felt like I was in the right place,” the 64-year-old enthused. “I just thought, ‘My God, this is so cool, and I’m absolutely loving this.’”
At the dawn of the millennium, Montgomery, who has a background as a Broadway performer, met Macy’s Parade creative director Bill Schermerhorn.
“I asked him, ‘Hey, do you ever need a runner or somebody who can come in for a week?” she recalled. “I got hired to be the data entry person, and I literally learned the parade from the bottom up.”
In 2003, Montgomery was promoted to costume director, a role she’s held ever since.
And after more than two decades in the job, the costume connoisseur has her Thanksgiving day routine down pat.
After her 2.30 a.m. wake-up call, she heads to the Tick Tock Diner on 8th Ave. and W. 34th St. to grab a pre-dawn breakfast with a team of 10 colleagues, fueling up for the frantic day ahead.
“At 4.15 a.m., we meet about 200 of our parade day dressers and makeup artists, and we get the walkie-talkies going and turn the lights on in the [dressing] venues,” she dished. “At 5 a.m., we open the doors.”
What ensues is an avalanche of parade participants who file in to be dressed up.
While Montgomery’s role requires supreme organizational skills and military precision, equally important is her ability to improvise.
“I am actually the queen of plan B,” she quipped. “I’ve always got in my head ‘What could plan B be if plan A doesn’t work out? I’ve already got those things in my head for just about everything in the parade.”
Unlike many other large-scale spectacles, Macy’s doesn’t hold fittings with every one of the thousands of participants ahead of time.
“It’s a little bit of roulette on the Thursday morning in some situations,” Montgomery explained. “But we have looked at heights and weights and inseams and all those things. Sometimes people lie a little bit, so we do have a surprise or two on occasion, but we try to prepare for plan B.”
From 5 a.m. to 2.30 p.m., Montgomery says she and her team are “riding a wave of energy that we have to sort of keep a lid on with all of our organization.”
Just as important as the dressing is the undressing — as parade participants return, their items are put back on racks and immediately trucked back to a storage facility in New Jersey.
“We do that with every float in between Turkey and Santa [the last float],” Montgomery explained. “So by the time Santa comes back, that’s the only rack sitting in all these venues… Literally everything else has been cleaned up.”
Most importantly, the team prays that the rain stays away, given that many garments are re-worn or repurposed for the following year as costume companies are usually on three year contracts with Macy’s.
“Last year, everything was soaked to the socks,” Montgomery stated, recalling the soppy celebrations of 2024. “We had to get those dry within like 72 hours before they mildewed, otherwise you lose millions and millions of dollars worth of costumes.”
By mid-afternoon, Montgomery’s duties have wrapped up, and she’s ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with her husband and two adult sons — one of whom is participating in this year’s parade.
The family usually dines at a hotel in the city, with Montgomery saying she’s certainly in no mood to swap costuming for cooking.
“I try to avoid cooking at all costs, whether it’s Thanksgiving or any day of the week,” she laughed. “I’m not the best at that.”
Despite approaching retirement age, Montgomery will be back next year as Macy’s celebrates its 100th Thanksgiving Day Parade.
She’s proud to be a part of an iconic New York City tradition, helping to make memories for the crowds who come to see the spectacular in person, as well as the millions more who are watching at home.
“I remember watching the parade as a kid with my dad on television in St. Louis,” the Missouri native recalled. “One of the first things I wanted to do when I moved to New York City in 1988 was stand on the street in the cold and watch Macy’s parade go by, which I did.”
“It really does kick off the holiday season,” she continued. “Macy’s has been doing this for 99 years — that’s pretty phenomenal.”
The host with the most
Marty Rogers, a 70-year-old retiree and lifelong member of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in the Melrose section of The Bronx, can’t even remember what it’s like to kick back and relax on Thanksgiving Day.
For the past 47 years, he’s been a pivotal part of the holiday dinner offered by the parish to neighbors in need — an event he helped organize when he was just a kid, and one he now organizes and oversees.
The idea for the free feast originated when elderly parishioners with no family in the area had nowhere to go. Wanting to help, the Immaculate Conception youth group decided to serve up a modest meal.
“We had three turkeys, which we conned our parents into making,” Rogers told The Post, chuckling at the memory. “Because we were high school and college folks, we weren’t exactly doing much in terms of the kitchen. But the need was there.”
Nearly five decades later, the annual do has ballooned to become a full-on event in the church’s social hall, complete with a whopping 40 turkeys served by 150 volunteers, multiple courses and, in recent years, even entertainment put on by a local troupe of Mexican dancers.
“We’re like Radio City Music Hall, except we feed you,” Rogers said.
Holiday culinary staples like mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce are prepared to feed approximately 500 hungry eaters. The church typically serves around 200 seated in the hall (though some take their meals to go), delivering the rest to those who can’t physically make it to the banquet.
Rogers is loud and proud about the fact that the church’s young people, ranging from elementary school to high school students, make up more than half of the dinner’s volunteers. The event is a family affair, too — his wife Francine Nolin-Rogers and their three adult children and grandchildren have happily pitched in over the years.
The church doesn’t advertise the meal on social media, rather relying on word-of-mouth and flyers handed out on Rogers’ regular Hope Walks, where he hands out sandwiches and encouragement along E. 149th St. multiple times a week, throughout the year.
Donations in the form of food and funds are gathered before the big day in preparation. Rogers estimates that the dinner costs around $3,000 in total, but would cost over $7,000 if they had to pay for turkeys, which the nearby Sisters of Christian Charity (who run a turkey drive in conjunction with a New Jersey church) usually provide, along with other local groups.
Volunteers spend the Monday before Thanksgiving sprucing up the hall with streamers and decorations to make it look “beautiful and very festive.”
Others prepare the turkeys in their own homes, garnishing the meat with herbs and spices. Rogers said that the birds prepared in some volunteers’ homes come out smelling like garlic, while others have the distinct scent of jerk.
As for the service itself, Rogers is adamant that it runs like a “five star restaurant.”
“When (the guests) come in, they’re greeted, they get a name tag,” Rogers said. “Everyone calls each other by their name. Then they go to the maître d’, who wears a bow tie and seats people…We take care of them, that’s our motto. We don’t want them to get up.”
The volunteers, many of whom are bilingual and can serve the area’s large Spanish-speaking population, do more than simply pass out plates.
As they take orders (each person can select what items they prefer off the pre-set menu), Rogers asks his younger volunteers that instead of going on their “bloody cellphones,” they take a bit of time to chat with the guests. He’s observed that they gladly oblige.
Though Rogers is hesitant to accept any amount of credit for the dinner’s yearly success, fellow Immaculate Conception parishioner Mary Anne Christopher was quick to emphasize how integral he is to pulling off the feast — along with how eager fellow church members and members of the community are to help him do it.
“He asks, and we answer,” Christopher told The Post. “He’s pretty much like, ‘No pressure, do what you can’, but people figure it out because they want to help. They find a way.”
When the day is done (typically around 2 p.m.), Rogers, his wife and any children and grandchildren present then help clean up before heading home, where they enjoy their own meal together as a family — that’s anything but turkey.
“We usually have baked ziti and meatballs, sausage or chicken parmesan. Some kind of Italian food, because we’re tired of smelling and looking at turkeys,” Rogers admitted. “We’ve been in turkey mode up to the elbows for weeks at that point.”
And while he’s exhausted at the end of the day, he wouldn’t have Thanksgiving any other way, he said.
“We were built to share. We were built to be brothers and sisters — we are brothers and sisters,” said Rogers. “Kindness and service and sharing is our natural environment, and we’ve gotten away from that…Give (your time) away and just keep it simple. That’s what I’ve seen from the generosity of so many wonderful people.”
Let her cook
To Fariyal Abdullahi, a 39-year-old executive chef helming the kitchen at trendy Chelsea seafood spot Hav & Mar, spending Thanksgiving bustling around the cheery restaurant accompanied by her beloved staff seems only natural.
Now in her thirteenth year of working her way up the culinary industry ladder — during which she “cut her teeth” at the World’s 50 Best and three-Michelin-star Copenhagen establishment Noma and worked the 2021 Met Gala — Abdullahi maintains that she’s gotten used to donning her chef’s jacket and cap during these traditional days of rest.
“They tell you these things in culinary school — that you’re going to be working Thanksgiving and Christmas and you probably won’t be able to make most graduations or birthday parties,” Abdullahi told The Post. “It doesn’t really sink in then, but the first year you’re an actual professional working in a kitchen, it’s no joke.”
Abdullahi said that the way Hav & Mar guests are particularly expressive with their gratitude for the restaurant’s mouthwatering international cuisine on Thanksgiving Day makes it much easier to come into work on everyone else’s day off.
“No one’s ever in a bad mood on Thanksgiving,” Abdullahi said, laughing. “Everyone who comes in here is just so grateful that we’re even open…More than any other day, I always have guests coming to say ‘thank you.’”
Abdullahi, handpicked by restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson to lead the team at Hav & Mar, which opened in late 2022, had not always aimed to become a chef.
Born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, she came to the United States at 17 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in psychology — with the ultimate goal of becoming a doctor, like most of her five older siblings.
However, when the time came to apply to grad school, Abdullahi found herself secretly filling out culinary school applications instead.
Over a decade later, Abdullahi’s dream has become a reality. She infuses her cooking with the fierce pride she holds in her Ethiopian roots and the influence of her years in Nordic kitchens — two connections she serendipitously shares with Ethiopian-Swedish chef Samuelsson, who named the restaurant after the Swedish word for ocean (“hav”) and Amharic word for honey (“mar”).
Though this blended heritage served as the original inspiration for the critically acclaimed eatery — where plates range from $13 for a blue cornbread appetizer to $109 for slow-cooked oxtail biryani — Abdullahi shared that the menu, which rotates four times a year and is still largely seafood, has since evolved to tell the culinary story of a broader range of immigrants.
“I have two (sous) chefs from the Philippines and they started making me some Filipino dishes,” Abdullahi recalled. “I have a line cook who’s from Peru, I have a line cook who’s from Ecuador, and everybody just kind of started to chime in. Chef Marcus and I had a conversation and we were like, you know what? This is exactly what New York is.”
For Thanksgiving Day, Abdullahi does not curate a menu with the traditional American fixings, though the restaurant did try utilizing a buffet style with classic staples during its first year.
Instead, guests can order one of Hav & Mar’s signature dishes à la carte — which are prepared by Abdullahi and the rest of the restaurant team. Typically, that includes three people for prep work in the morning and six people at night to serve up to 140 customers (though the holiday turnout historically rings in at around 80).
Abdullahi shared that her Hav & Mar staff — some of whom have been there since the restaurant’s opening — feels like “an extended family,” which makes spending the day away from blood relatives a bit easier on everyone.
Prior to their Thanksgiving shift, the group sits down to their own holiday-inspired ‘family meal’ — a tradition in some restaurants where employees gather together to eat food before serving guests. While the spread is typically prepared by one person in the eatery’s kitchen, Abdullahi says that almost everyone likes to pitch in on Turkey Day.
“A couple days ago, one of our supervisors for the A.M. prep team named Maria asked if for Thanksgiving this year, she could make us tamales,” Abdullahi recalled. “Then she and the prep team were planning out different flavors and asking everyone what they wanted to eat. It was really cute.”
The secret sauce to this close-knit feel? Abdullahi makes sure she “always leaves (her) kitchen with joy.”
“There will always be discipline and making sure there’s work getting done, but I have a ‘no yelling’ policy — I try to create as joyful an environment as I can,” she continued. “So we’re always playing music, we’re always having fun. It’s a great place to be.”
More than anything, Abdullahi hopes that the Hav & Mar Thanksgiving crowd leaves their feast feeling “filled with ‘joie de vivre.’”
“I love creating traditions with my team and creating a temporary home for people who can’t be with (the rest of) their families for whatever reason,” Abdullahi said. “I want them to leave feeling cared for, like they were part of something special.”
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