The lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is a cue to the season: the holidays are here! The first Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City was decorated in 1931 and was a meager 20-foot tall balsam fir.

Of interest to nerds that enjoy the holidays and trees might be the Rockefeller Christmas Tree data set. These data contain 75 years of information about the tree, including its species, height, and the town where it grew.

The Rockefeller tree is always chosen from the region around New York City. The tree has originated from 11 states in the northeastern US and one Canadian province (Ontario). This year’s tree was selected from East Greenbush, New York, the 37th time the tree was selected from New York.

The 2025 tree is similar to characteristics of previous Rockefeller Center trees. This year’s tree is a Norway spruce, the species it’s been since at least 1982, and for many years before that. White spruce and balsam fir were chosen for the tree prior between the 1930s and 1980s.

This year’s tree is 75 feet tall, quite similar to the long-term average of 72.3 feet (n = 94). The selected tree has generally become taller over time:

Averaged across all previous years, the mean distance between a tree’s home and Rockefeller Center is 95.4 miles. This year’s tree traveled approximately 128 miles to get to Manhattan, quite similar to the long-term average. Historically, the tree has been selected from as close as 11 miles away (Tenafly, New Jersey) to as far as 401 miles away (Richfield, Ohio).

This year’s tree is in the 75 percentile of distance traveled to get to Rockefeller Center:

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree dataset is a fun one to explore. See this GitHub page for the data.

Happy holidays, all!

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By Matt Russell. Subscribe to our monthly email newsletter for data and analytics trends in the forest products industry.