This year’s Rockefeller tree is the first from Massachusetts since 1959. The holiday season begins with the annual tree lighting on Wednesday, Dec. 4.
NEW YORK — She’s a beaut, Clark!
Rockefeller Center has selected its Christmas tree for the 2024 holiday season. The first look at the tree was unveiled Monday morning.
Hailing from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Norway spruce stands 74 feet tall and weighs about 11 tons. This year’s tree is the first from Massachusetts since 1959, according to Rockefeller Center officials.
The tree will be cut down Thursday, Nov. 7, and make the 140-mile trip south to New York City.
The tree will arrive in Manhattan on Saturday, Nov. 9, which will give it enough time for it to be decorated with 50,000 LED lights and a Swarovski star.
The spruce will be lit during the 92nd annual Christmas in Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony. This year’s lighting celebration airs Wednesday, Dec. 4, on NBC.
In 2023, the tree at Rockefeller Plaza was an 80-foot spruce from Vestal, New York.
In 2022, the tree was an 82-foot Norway spruce from Queensbury, New York.
In 2021, the Rockefeller Christmas tree was a 79-foot-tall, 46-foot-wide Norway spruce from Elkton, Maryland.
In 2020, the Center’s tree received worldwide attention after a worker setting up the tree discovered a northern saw-whet owl inside. The owl, dubbed Rockefeller, made the 170-mile journey from upstate New York to the Big Apple in the tree.
The bird was taken to the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center in the Hudson Valley, where she dined on mice before returning to the wild. The center said the northern saw-whet owl is one of the smallest in the northeast.
The owl was honored with her own Frontier Airlines’ plane tail as well as a children’s book.
Rockefeller tree owl of 2020
The tradition of the Rockefeller Christmas tree dates back more than 90 years to 1931 during the Great Depression.
The first official tree-lighting ceremony occurred two years later in 1933 in front of the then eight-month-old RCA Building (the current Comcast Building).
The Christmas tree gathering was enhanced in 1936 with the opening of the Rockefeller Plaza outdoor ice-skating rink.
NBC-TV televised the tree lighting for the first time in 1951 on “The Kate Smith Show” and as part of the nationwide “Howdy Doody” television show from 1953-55.
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