The city of New York inaugurated the Christmas season this Wednesday with the traditional lighting of lights of the gigantic Rockefeller Center treeAlthough this year, due to the coronavirus, it was a ceremony that only a handful of people could see live, while the rest of the fans of this event had to follow it on television.
The protagonist of the night, a Canadian spruce almost 23 meters high and 11 tons in weight, which traveled to the Big Apple a little over two weeks ago from the town of Oneonta, more than 270 kilometers from the city of skyscrapers. , was illuminated with more than 50,000 multi-color LED lights.
A huge star that was designed in 2018 by the architect Daniel Libeskind, and which is made up of some three million Swarovski crystals, also came to the fore, at the top of the treetop, so its weight amounts to about 400 kilos.
To celebrate the lighting of the tree, several music stars joined in an event lasting about two hours, before the formal lights-on, which took place at 22:00 local time (03:00 GMT).
Among the participants are the singer Dolly Parton, who performed the song “Mary Did You Know”, which is part of her new Christmas album; the band The Goo Goo Dolls, who sang the Christmas carol “Let it Snow”; Tory Kelly with “Slay Ride”; the a cappella singing group Pentatonix, with “Amazing Grace”; Gwen Stefani, with “You Make it Feel Like Christmas”, and as a culmination a performance of the famous Rockettes from Radio City Music Hall.
Despite the lack of public, there are several peculiarities that have led to this rockefeller tree to take over social networks this year.
In fact, there is a long list of mocking comments for his patchy foliage in recent weeks, with jokes in the style that he has “cut his hair himself” and perfectly represents an abrupt 2020 marked by the pandemic and the elections.
History
The first Christmas tree that was installed at the site was placed in 1931 by construction workers at the site where the Rockefeller Center.
The first formal lighting ceremony took place in 1933 and the tradition has continued since then with some variations.
Sometimes there have been two pines in place, but in 1942 there were three, adorned with red, white and blue balls, to support the troops fighting in World War II.
The trees of that year and those that were placed in the Christmas Successive, until the end of the war, were not adorned with lights because of the regulations that governed the armed conflict.
The tallest tree that has been placed so far was the one that was installed in 1999, at 30.5 meters, originally from the town of Killingworth, in the state of Connecticut.
EFE
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