It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas in midtown Manhattan and Rockefeller Center will join the holiday party on Wednesday with the annual lighting of the Christmas tree.
This year’s tree was donated from the Russ family and hails from East Greenbush, New York. The tree is an 11-ton Norway Spruce that’s 75-feet tall and 45-feet wide.
There are over 50,000 multi-colored LED lights on the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, connected by approximately five miles worth of wire.
On Wednesday, the tree will be lit in a nationally-televised broadcast on NBC in primetime hosted by Reba McEntire.
When is the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting 2025?
The 2025 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 3.
The tree will be lit just before 10 p.m. Eastern.
How and where to watch the Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting
For those in New York City hoping to watch the lighting in person, the special event will take place by the tree, situated above the Rink at Rockefeller Center between 49th and 50th Streets, and 5th and 6th Avenues.
Though the area around Rockefeller Center is open to the public, viewers can buy tickets to be photographed with the tree in the background. VIP tickets are also available for a closer spot to the tree.
When will the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting be on TV and what channel will it be on?
The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting pre-show coverage will start at 6:30 p.m. on the NBC New York streaming channel in the NBC NY app, on Peacock or wherever you stream.
Full coverage starts at 7 p.m. on NBC New York with “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” hosted by Natalie Pasquarella, David Ushery and Mario Lopez.
The national program begins at 8 p.m. on NBC television hosted by Reba McEntire, who will be joined by TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Al Roker and Craig Melvin.
When is the Rockefeller Christmas tree lit every day?
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is lit daily from 5 a.m. to midnight.
On Christmas Eve, the tree will be lit for an entire 24 hours, whereas on New Year’s Eve the spruce will be illuminated from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.
How long will the Rockefeller Christmas tree be up?
Rockefeller’s Christmas Tree will be on display to the public through mid-January 2025.
What happens to the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree after it comes down?
The tree goes from providing Christmas joy to providing housing.
When the tree is taken down, it is laid in Rockefeller Plaza to be cut up and taken to a yard in New Jersey. There it is milled into two-by-four and two-by six beams and branded with a Rockefeller Center stamp. Tishman Speyer, the firm that owns and operates Rockefeller Center, then donates the lumber to Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that helps to build and improve homes across the country.
Here’s a brief history of the tree-lighting
- 1931 – Construction workers building Rockefeller Center put up a Christmas tree, the first-ever Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.
- 1933 – First formal Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting Ceremony. The tree was decked with 700 lights in front of the eight-month-old RCA Building.
- 1936 – Two trees, each 70 feet (21.3 m) tall, were erected. For the first time the Lighting Ceremony included a skating pageant on the newly opened Rockefeller Plaza Outdoor Ice Skating Pond.
- 1942 – Three trees were placed on Rockefeller Plaza, one decorated in red, one in white and one in blue to show support for our troops serving during World War II.
- 1949 – The tree was painted silver, to look like snow.
- 1951 – The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree was lit for the first time on national television on the Kate Smith Show.
- 1966 – The first tree from outside the United States was erected. It was given by Canada, in honor of the Centennial of its Confederation. This is the farthest distance a tree has traveled to Rockefeller Center.
- 1980 – For the 50th tree lighting, a 70-foot-tall (21.3 m) Norway Spruce came from the grounds of the Immaculate Conception Seminary of Mahwah, N.J. Bob Hope participated in the lighting.
- 1999 – The largest tree in Rockefeller Center history, 100 feet tall, came from Killingworth, Connecticut.
- 2004 – The Swarovski-designed star became the largest star to ever grace the tree.
- 2007 – For the first time, the tree was lit with energy-efficient LEDs. They draw a fraction of the power that had been traditionally required by the tree, reducing energy consumption from 3,510 kwH to 1,297 kwH per day, saving as much energy as a family would use in a month in a 2,000-square-foot home. Hundreds of solar panels atop one of the Rockefeller Center buildings help power the new LEDs.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is a long-term tenant of 30 Rockefeller Center.
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