10 Illuminating Facts About Christmas in Rockefeller Center & That Massive Tree

A towering Norway spruce is in position in midtown Manhattan, ready to be lit up on December 4 as NBC celebrates the holiday season with Christmas in Rockefeller Center.

Once again, Kelly Clarkson is hosting the festivities — which kick off at 8/7c on NBC and Peacockthat night — and she’ll perform alongside the Backstreet Boys, Dan + Shay, Megan Hilty, Jennifer Hudson, Coco Jones, Little Big Town, Raye, Thalia, and the Radio City Rockettes.

The real star of the show, of though, is the tree.“There is truly no tradition like watching that gorgeous tree sparkle and transforming Rockefeller Center into the epicenter of the holiday season in New York,” Jen Neal, NBCUniversal Entertainment’s executive vice president of live events and specials, said in an NBC press release.

Ahead of the big show, keep reading to learn more about the history — and the heft! — of the holiday spectacle.

1. With Christmas in Rockefeller Center, NBC is continuing on a seven-decade tradition.

The Rockefeller Center tree lighting was televised for the first time in 1951 on NBC’s The Kate Smith Evening Hour, according to the New York City tourism website. In 2023, 7 million viewers watched NBC’s coverage across all platforms, according to Variety.

2. This year’s tree is an 11-ton, 74-foot Norway spruce from Massachusetts.

Erik Pauze, Rockefeller Center’s head gardener, spotted the tree while driving through West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 2020 and asked property owner Earl Albert if the tree could become Rockefeller Center’s star attraction. Albert’s wife Lesley had died two days prior, and she loved Christmas, so the Albert family considered the tree donation a way of honoring her, as the Associated Press reports.

3. The tree is adorned with more than 50,000 lights and a star with 3 million crystals.

It takes approximately 5 miles of wire to power all those Christmas lights, as the Rockefeller Center website notes. And that 9-foot-tall, Swarovski crystal-studded star on top — designed by architect Daniel Libeskind in 2018 — weighs about 900 pounds.

4. The first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree went up in 1931, and the first tree lighting ceremony came two years later.

Rockefeller Center workers pooled their money to buy a 20-foot-tall balsam fir in 1931 and decorated the tree with garlands made by their family members. In 1933, Rockefeller Center made the Christmas tree a holiday tradition and held the first tree lighting ceremony.

5. Four reindeer accompanied the 1941 tree.

The reindeer came from a private herd in Lake Placid, New York, and they were lowered via crane into pens on either side of Rockefeller Center’s Prometheus Fountain, as The New York Times reported at the time. The plan was to host the reindeer in the plaza until after New Year’s, then transfer them to the Bronx Zoo.

6. The 1998 tree was flown in on a supersized cargo plane.

After organizers selected a tree from a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, they flew the seven-ton Norway spruce to New York on an Antonov AN-124, the world’s largest cargo plane, rather than transporting it on a truck. “The spruce would be desiccated and could be damaged by such a long drive,” David Murbach, then the manager of the gardens division at Rockefeller Center, told The New York Times at the time. “It’s a logistical nightmare to drive a 20-foot-wide load on interstate highways at 25 miles an hour.”

7. The largest tree, measuring 100 feet tall, went up in 1999.

Rockefeller Center’s largest tree yet was a 1999 selection from Killingworth, Connecticut. At 100 feet tall, it was just about a third of the height of the Statue of Liberty and almost an eighth of the height of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

8. Around 750,000 people visit the tree in person every day.

“We feel incredibly lucky for the opportunity to be of service to millions of people,” Jackie McGinley, whose family donated the 2023 tree, told WNBC that year. “How often in one’s lifetime do you get to do something that will bring millions of people joy?”

9. Rockefeller Center is on the lookout for trees for future Christmas seasons.

The Rockefeller Center website has a contact form for people interested in donating a tree for the yuletide display. The team traditionally chooses a Norway spruce “in the later years of its life cycle,” measuring at least 75 feet tall and 45 feet in diameter, the site adds. Pauze says you “shouldn’t be able to see the sky” through the tree’s branches, according to the NYC tourism website.

10. After the holiday season, the Rockefeller Center Christmas trees go to a good cause.

Tishman Speyer, Rockefeller Center’s owner and operator, has donated the lumber from the plaza’s Christmas trees to Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that builds homes for families in need, every year since 2007. The trees are milled into two-by-four and two-by-six beams that have been used for the construction of Habitat homes from New York to Mississippi, according to the organization. Oh, the humani-tree!

Christmas in Rockefeller Center, Wednesday, December 4, 8/7c, NBC & Peacock