The Bowery Boys · Tom Meyers, Greg Young

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree: A History in Lights

November 14, 2025·47 min·3 clips

Workers in 1931 erected a 20-foot Christmas tree in a muddy excavation pit to collect their pay during the Great Depression.

Host Greg Young traces the history of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree from its origins in the broader American tradition of public Christmas celebrations. The first community Christmas tree appeared in Madison Square Park on December 24, 1912, drawing 25,000 people to see a 70-foot electrically lit tree funded by progressive reformers. The national Christmas tree outside the White House followed in 1923, and Macy's launched its Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, cementing Christmas as a commercial public spectacle. John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased Columbia University's Upper Estate in midtown Manhattan to build a business complex originally centered on a new Metropolitan Opera House, but the 1929 stock market crash changed the plan, bringing in David Sarnoff's Radio Corporation of America instead. Construction of Rockefeller Center began in 1931, providing rare employment during the Depression, with Rockefeller reportedly employing more people than any entity except the federal government. On December 24, 1931, workers erected a 20-foot tree in the excavation pit, decorating it with cranberries, paper garlands, and tin cans — the only record being a photograph of workers collecting their pay beside it. Radio City Music Hall opened in December 1932 as the world's largest theater, introducing the Roxiettes who later became the Rockettes. The RCA Building (30 Rock) opened in 1933, but a commissioned Diego Rivera fresco depicting Lenin was destroyed after controversy. Publicist Merle Crowell created the formal Christmas tree lighting ceremony in 1933 partly to redirect public attention, with the first ceremony broadcast on NBC Radio. The 1934 lighting was the first heavily publicized event, featuring a 70-foot tree from Babylon, New York, and live musical entertainment. The golden Prometheus statue was installed in 1934, and an ice skating rink opened on Christmas Day 1936. During World War II, the tree went dark in compliance with blackout regulations, replaced by three small unlit trees in red, white, and blue. Post-war exuberance peaked in 1949 when the tree was spray-painted in camouflage pastels and surrounded by 576 spinning plastic snowflakes, causing a massive Fifth Avenue traffic jam. Television transformed the tradition: Kate Smith's show first broadcast the lighting in 1951, Howdy Doody brought it to children in 1952, and NBC moved it to primetime in 1997 with Al Roker, Matt Lauer, Harry Connick Jr., and the cast of Rent. The selection of each year's tree is described as akin to a casting process, with head gardener David Merbach scouting by helicopter for trees with 'character,' sometimes negotiating with reluctant owners. In 1975, a New Canaan, Connecticut family watched their beloved 59-foot balsam fir — a neighborhood landmark since 1928 — taken away by crane. The tree lighting has also reflected national moods, including a moment of silence for AIDS victims in 1999 and red, white, and blue lights after September 11, 2001. Since 2007, the trees have been recycled into lumber for Habitat for Humanity homes. Young closes with a note about Rocky, a northern saw-whet owl who hitched a ride on the 2020 tree and became a brief media sensation during the pandemic.

As heard by us

A polished history of how Rockefeller Center turned a Christmas tree into a New York holiday spectacle.

New York's most famous Christmas tree gets treated here as holiday ritual, media event, and deeply specific Midtown history. The episode traces how Rockefeller Center's tree moved from a plaza idea into an official lighting ceremony, with press attention, NBC Radio, garden…

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