NEW YORK – One of the world’s most famous trees is ready to shine and sparkle again.

The annual “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” tree lighting special, a tradition more than nine decades old, airs Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. MT on NBC.

Emmy and Grammy winner Kelly Clarkson will return to host the annual two-hour holiday event.

This year’s Rockefeller Christmas tree comes from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts and is a 74-foot tall spruce tree. The tree was decorated with 50,000 LED lights and a Swarovski star crown sparkling with 3 million crystals.

It is the first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree to come from Massachusetts since 1959. When the tree is cut down in January, it will be made into lumber for Habitat for Humanity.

The annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting special airs Wednesday at 7 p.m. MT on NBC.

Clarkson will host the lighting special from the spot, which is now also home to her talk show “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”

This year marks the 21st anniversary of Clarkson’s first Christmas in Rockefeller Center appearance, and she has performed a few times since then.

“Today” anchors Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Al Roker and Craig Melvin will also attend the tree lighting live from Manhattan.

The ceremony will also feature performances by Backstreet Boys, Jennifer Hudson, Dan + Shay, Megan Hilty, Thalia and the Radio City Rockettes.

This year’s ceremony will also be streamed on Peacock for the fourth time.

The Rockefeller Christmas tree tradition dates back more than 92 years, to 1931 during the Great Depression.

The first official tree lighting ceremony took place two years later, in 1933, in front of the then eight-month-old RCA building (now the Comcast building).

The Christmas Tree Gathering expanded in 1936 with the opening of the outdoor ice skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza.

NBC-TV first broadcast the tree lighting in 1951 on “The Kate Smith Show” and on the nationally televised “Howdy Doody” from 1953 to 1955.

In 2023, the 80-foot-tall spruce tree came from Vesta, New York.

In 2022, the tree was an 82-foot-tall and 50-foot-wide Norway spruce from Queensbury, New York.

In 2021, the Rockefeller Christmas tree was a 79-foot-tall and 46-foot-wide spruce tree from Elkton, Maryland.

In 2020, the center’s tree received global attention after a worker erecting the tree discovered a saw-whet owl in it. The owl, called Rockefeller, reached the 170 million marke Travel from upstate New York to the Big Apple in the tree.

The bird was taken to the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center in the Hudson Valley, where it fed on mice before returning to the wild. The center said the northern saw-whet owl is one of the smallest in the Northeast.

The owl was honored with the tail of her own Frontier Airlines plane as well as a children’s book.

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