Nearly 125 million excited New Yorkers and visitors this year will be watching the Christmas at Rockefeller Center – but 85 years ago it was a very different story.
Shortly after the stock market crash in October 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, the United States fell into a period of despair, as the economy fell into a spiral and the unemployment rate soared.
Several projects were put into practice, and by the early 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt had developed “relief and reform measures” that played a role in reversing the economic downturn. Around that time, John D. Rockefeller and his family were known for their work in the “City of the City” – Rockefeller Plaza project, which employed more than 40,000 people.
Its Christmas tree has occasionally become a tradition. From 1931, when workers gathered free cash on Christmas Eve to decorate the then “20 feet balsam fir” and “a bunch of cranberries, paper garlands” and even a few tins Cans, as reported by the Daily News.
The official tree lighting ceremony did not begin until 1933, when NBC broadcasted 700 bulbs of 40-foot balm.
As the years go by, spruce is becoming more and more popular – as well as height and width. It ranged from 50 feet in 1933 to 65 feet in 1971 – up to 100 feet in 1999.
Christmas customs will become a holiday phenomenon in the coming years, bringing light to people around the world and helping people through the toughest times of the country.
After the tragedy of September 11 brought the country to despair, the Rockefeller Christmas tree was decorated with red, white and blue lights to commemorate the fallen victims and heroes.
By 2007, the tree even became “green”, energy-efficient lighting and new LED bulbs use “a reduction of 1,200 kilowatts per day, enough to power a 2000 square foot home for a month.”
In the past decade, after the holiday, the shrubs have been dismantled and donated to Habitat for home construction.
According to RadioCity, the Rockefeller Center retains New York’s theatre and film history as it is the birthplace of Gone with the Wind and the debut of the famous Radio City Christmas spectacular show, including the famous Rockettes. COM.
Considering only the number of people who passed it alone in 1939, the area is said to be large enough to become the “51st largest city in the United States.”
The site is now made up of several of Manhattan’s most famous high-rise commercial buildings in Midtown, and is recognized most in the world for its annual tree lighting.
Over the past eight decades, New York has continued to observe this gleaming bush, becoming a “place of gathering and reflecting what is happening in the world around us.”
