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We Are the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and It Is Us

Tree

Photo: Getty Images

A gazillion people showed up at Rockefeller Center last night to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the annual tree-lighting ceremony, and the dawn of what we truly believe is the most wonderful time of the year: the season in which tourists wait in long, miserable lines in order to fall on their asses and slide embarrassingly across a cold sheet of ice. As the lights twinkled in the night sky, Josh Groban, whose holiday album Noel is No. 1, thanks to Oprah, was feeling philosophical. “Every year I kind of say to myself, ‘What a beautiful tree,’” he told New York. “It’s great that it’s on display, but I mean the tree doesn’t know that that’s the best it is ever going to look. It’s just a living thing. You know?” —Catherine Coreno

We Are the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and It Is Us