NEW YORK \u2014 The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was hoisted aloft at its new home in Manhattan on Saturday, marking the start of New York City’s holiday season.<\/p>\n
This year’s tree is a 75-foot tall Norway spruce from the upstate town of East Greenbush, a suburb of Albany. After being cut down this week, it made the roughly 150-mile journey south on a flatbed truck, drawing curious onlookers along the way.<\/p>\n
The crowds were much bigger at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where workers used cranes to hoist the 11-ton tree into position overlooking the iconic skating rink. People gathered with coffee cups and phones as crews secured the spruce and began the careful process of stabilizing it.<\/p>\n
The tree will be soon be decorated with more than 50,000 multicolored, energy-efficient LED lights and crowned with a Swarovski star weighing 900 pounds.<\/p>\n
It will be lit Dec. 3 during a live TV broadcast hosted by country music star Reba McEntire and remain on display until mid-January, after which it will be milled into lumber for use by the affordable housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity.<\/p>\n
The tree was donated by homeowner Judy Russ and her family. She said it was planted by her husband’s great-grandparents in the 1920s.<\/p>\n
“For this to now become the center of New York City Christmas is incredible,” Russ told the radio station 1010 WINS.<\/p>\n
The first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was put up by workers in 1931 to raise spirits during the Great Depression. The comparatively modest 20-foot balsam fir was outfitted with garlands handmade by the workers’ families.<\/p>\n
The tradition stuck as the first tree-lighting ceremony was held in 1933.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was hoisted aloft at its new home in Manhattan on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":366520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,419,418,171,11090,421,420,1165,425,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,422,423,62,399,314,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,424,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-366519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cars","10":"tag-classifieds","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-holiday","13":"tag-homes","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-lifestyle","16":"tag-local","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newyork","21":"tag-newyorkcity","22":"tag-ny","23":"tag-nyc","24":"tag-radio","25":"tag-salt-lake","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-television","28":"tag-traffic","29":"tag-united-states","30":"tag-united-states-of-america","31":"tag-unitedstates","32":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","33":"tag-us","34":"tag-usa","35":"tag-utah","36":"tag-weather"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115518937855366489","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}