Christmas In New York Means One Thing: Rockefeller Center
The Familiar Landmark Hosts Ice Skating & A Stunning Tree
For many people, the holidays wouldn’t be complete without Rockefeller Center.
Whether or not you live in New York, the landmark is instantly recognizable. It’s a familiar backdrop for The Today Show on NBC, and the site of numerous music performances. During wintertime, it’s also a popular spot for ice skating; leading up to Christmas, it hosts a world-famous tree. Over the years, many families have taken pictures there, though these images may not be aging so gracefully anymore. That’s why the holidays are an excellent opportunity to ask, “Is now the right time to scan my slides?”
This year, the Rockefeller Center rink opened in October to eager skaters, who are allowed on the ice 150 at a time. It even hosted a Halloween costume party. The tree will not be illuminated until December 2, but it will stick around a week into January 2010. (On display year-round, of course, is the gilded Prometheus statue that is a landmark in itself.)
Rockefeller Center is known as a “city within a city.” A nostalgic and significant piece of history, it officially debuted in May 1933 under John D. Rockefeller Jr. The tree was introduced earlier, though, in 1931, and the skating rink opened later, in 1936. This photo depicts a typical holiday season of skating beneath the gloriously lit tree.
The tree became especially famous in the 1950s, after it appeared on The Howdy Doody Show. The decorations have grown more complex and flashy with time, from plastic globes to red floodlights. The 1964 tree required more than six miles of electrical wiring to power 7,000-plus lights. Yet 22 years later, that number seems woefully small, as the 1986 tree boasted 20,000 lights!
Like the tree, the skating rink is central to Rockefeller Center and the Christmas-in-New-York experience. Parents who now take their children there for lessons may have learned to skate at the very same venue. The experience is a memorable one that you likely have captured in old photos, which you should preserve and scan. My slides or yours, transferring them to digital format is the only way to truly hang on to these memories for generations to come.