Each December, New York City’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree stands brightly lit over the Plaza’s skating rink. It’s the iconic image of a big-city Christmas, and in urban centers across the U.S., huge trees rise in prominent public places.
But where do these holiday trees come from, and who decides which one should be the tree for a city’s annual festivities?
Historic Christmas Trees
Compared to the near 100-foot-tall, multi-thousand-bulb trees of today, Rockefeller Center’s first Christmas tree was a Depression-era display that looked like something out of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Construction workers for the Rockefeller complex pooled together their funds in December 1931 for a 20-foot balsam fir. The workers’ families then decorated the tree with simple, handmade garlands. Two years later, the first annual tree lighting ceremony took place, and the ice skating rink followed in 1936.
