Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting 2025 live updates: Where to watch, performers, time, channel and more
Rockefeller Center’s first Christmas tree lighting officially took place in 1933, but two years earlier, a group of Rockefeller Center workers chipped in to buy a 20-foot tree for the area, decorated with homemade garlands.
The famed ice rink was introduced in 1936, along with two trees. But with World War II, tree decorations became more modest, and in 1942, three smaller trees were lit rather than one huge tree.
The 1950s brought the introduction of scaffolding to decorate the tree — a process that required 20 men and nine days before the decade was out.
In 1997, the tree, which was from Stony Point, New York, traveled by barge down the Hudson River to 30 Rock. The next year’s tree, from Richfield, Ohio, was flown to New York City on the world’s largest transport plane.
Rockefeller Center’s largest-ever tree, 100 feet tall, stood on the plaza in 1999. And in 2001, people from around the world visited the tree, decorated in patriotic red, white and blue.
The first Swarovski crystal star topped Rockefeller Center’s tree in 2004. The one used today was created in 2018.
