75-foot Christmas tree arrives at Rockefeller Center

Nov. 14 (UPI) -- This year's 75-foot-tall Christmas tree arrived at Rockefeller Center on Saturday ready to be decked out for the holiday season.

The arrival of the Norway spruce -- which is 45 feet wide and weighs 11 tons -- marks the unofficial start of the holiday season for New York City.

This year's tree hails from Oneonta, N.Y., and is between 75 years and 80 years old, Rockefeller Center says.

Once decorated, it will boast more than 50,000 multi-colored LED lights on strings totaling about 5 miles long. It will also feature a 900-pound Swarovski crystal star, which was designed in 2018.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tree-lighting ceremony will be a little different this year. There will be no public access to the event, which will be aired on NBC on Dec. 2.

Details of the ceremony, which typically includes performance from popular musical acts, will be revealed at a future date.

After the lighting, visiting hours at the tree will be daily from 6 a.m. to midnight, 24 hours on Christmas Day, and 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve.

Workers erected the first tree at Rockefeller Center in 1931 after pooling their money together to buy a 20-foot-tall balsam fir. The center made the tree a tradition and held its first lighting ceremony two years later.