What happens to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree after it is taken down? It turns out that its mission to spread joy and cheer goes far beyond the holiday season. NBC New York’s Jennifer Vázquez reports.
It's a tree that helped provide memories for countless people who came to view it over the holiday season. Now, it will continue to help provide memories for one family for years to come.
Each year, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree gets a new life after leaving Rockefeller Plaza. The wood from the tree goes to Habitat for Humanity and is used to help build and improve homes across the country.
The tree from 2021 was recently used to help build a home for Felicia Hanna and her family in Elton, Maryland. What made that year's tree special is that it marked the first time a Rockefeller Center tree was returned to its original community for the next stage of its life.
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The 2024 tree, an 11-ton Norway Spruce, came from Massachusetts -- the first tree to come from that state since 1959.
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SIGN UP After the tree gets taken down, it is laid in Rockefeller Plaza to be cut up and taken to a yard in New Jersey. There it gets milled into two-by-four and two-by six beams and branded with a Rockefeller Center stamp. Tishman Speyer, the firm that owns and operates Rockefeller Center, then donates the lumber to the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity.
