8. America’s first Christmas Tree Lighting took place in Madison Square Park
The Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center pulls people from all over the world to bring in the holiday. Though, Christmas tree displays in the United States actually date back 1912 when the first public Christmas tree lighting ocurred in Madison Square Park using a tree from the Adirondacks with lights from the Edison Company.
As part of a progressive movement to help the poor, according to The Bowery Boys, Emilie Herreshoff planned the lighting to emulate European civic customs as a “clean, proper, somber affair,” counter-programming to the Times Square celebration. Jacob Riis, the photographer behind How the Other Half Lives, believed that the holidays did not call for great and raucous celebrations, so events like Christmas tree lightings would give the poor an alternative. The Star of Hope monument in the park corresponds today to the approximate point of the first tree lighting.