The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree: A History In Lights (from The Bowery Boys)

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has brought joy and sparkle to Midtown Manhattan since the early 1930s. The annual festivities may seem steady and timeless but this holiday icon actually has a surprisingly dramatic history.

Millions tune in each year to watch the tree lighting in a music-filled ceremony on NBC, and tens of thousands more will crowd around the tree’s massive branches during the holiday season, adjusting their phones for that perfect holiday selfie.

But the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is more than just decor. The tree has reflected the mood of the United States itself — through good times and bad.

The first tree at this site in 1931 became a symbol of hope during the Great Depression. With the dedication of the first official Christmas tree two years later, the lighting ceremony was considered a stroke of marketing genius for the grand new “city within a city” funded by JD Rockefeller Jr.

The tree has also been an enduring television star — from the early years in the 1950s with Howdy Doody to its upgrade to prime time in the 1990s.

Join Greg Young for this festive holiday history featuring kaleidoscopic lighting displays, painted branches, whirling snowflakes, reindeer and a very tiny owl.

** This episode originally aired in December 2021.

Transcript

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0:23.4	Sign up for your £1 per month trial at Shopify.com.uk.
0:27.7	com.
0:27.7	Okay, history this week listeners. Happy holidays to you. It is Sally here. Today, we're bringing
0:34.5	you an episode from the podcast, The Bowery Boys, a show that explores 400 years of New York City history, from the city's indigenous, Dutch, and English colonial roots to the streets, subways, and skyscrapers of the modern metropolis.
0:48.2	This episode is all about how America got its most famous Christmas tree, the towering Norway spruce that's brought into Rockefeller
0:55.0	Center each season. Enjoy. And we'll be back with more history this week on Monday.
1:00.3	Hey, it's the B the Barry Boys. This is Greg Young, solo this week to celebrate one of America's most popular Christmas symbols, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Now, millions tune in to watch the tree
1:30.6	lighting in a music-filled ceremony on NBC, and tens of thousands more will crowd around its massive
1:37.8	branches during the holiday season, adjusting their phones just right for that perfect holiday selfie.
1:44.1	Of course, many more native New Yorkers
1:47.5	who have taken the entire thing for granted will attempt to avoid Rockefeller Center and its Christmas tree
1:54.2	entirely until such random moment one cold December evening when they'll find themselves accidentally in front of the big beautiful
2:03.1	tree which will melt their cold jaded little hearts. I must confess that this happens to me
2:09.5	at least once a year. The tree is centrally located on the east side of 30 Rock amid a swirl of
2:17.3	activity, shopping, skating, and sightseeing,
2:21.1	with hundreds of offices looking down upon it. It's become more than a mere holiday decoration.
2:27.8	The tree is a celebrity of sorts, played by a different massive tree each year. On average, about 80 or 90 feet tall or a little under
2:37.8	a third of the height of the Statue of Liberty. It's where Kevin McAllister was reunited with his
2:44.6	family again, after being abandoned again, in the film Home Alone 2 lost in New York.
2:52.9	Oh, Kevin.
2:55.6	Mom, I'm sorry.
	...

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