The Mayor's Christmas Tree

The Mayor’s Christmas Tree is Kansas City’s official civic Christmas tree, erected each November on Crown Center Square and lit at a free public ceremony on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It stands as the emblem of the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund, a charity operating out of the mayor’s office since 1908 that provides holiday assistance to Kansas Citians in need. The tree has been at Crown Center since 1973; after the season its wood is milled into commemorative ornaments designed by Hallmark artists and sold the following year to fund the charity.

Origins

The tradition’s roots run to the 1870s, when the mayor of Kansas City personally administered aid to the city’s poor. Mayor George M. Shelley, facing a hard winter in 1878, bought enough groceries at his own expense to fill about a thousand Christmas baskets and had 50 cords of firewood stacked in Market Square — today’s City Market — for anyone who needed it.¹ Those who came to City Hall to collect a basket would have seen a modest tree there.¹ Reminiscing in 1925, Shelley said of the recipients: “Many of these persons, especially the jobless, would have no Christmas, I knew, unless the mayor made one possible for them.”¹

Shelley repeated the gesture the following Christmas with a party at Turner Hall at 10th and Main, playing Santa Claus himself. His successor, Charles A. Chace, discontinued the baskets and the party, and the practice lapsed through several administrations.¹

The City of Kansas City’s own account compresses this into a legend: “during his tenure as Mayor of Kansas City in the late 1870s, George Shelley purchased the first Mayor’s Christmas Tree on his own dime for all to enjoy and distributed food baskets to the poor.”² The Kansas City Public Library’s more detailed reconstruction, drawn from period newspapers and Shelley’s own 1925 recollection, is the fuller account.¹

Founding of the Fund (1908)

In 1908, Mayor Thomas T. Crittenden Jr. restored Christmas giving to the mayor’s office. Crittenden had served on the planning committee for the Fraternal Order of Eagles’ annual children’s Christmas party and wanted to do the same thing at citywide scale. He created the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund and solicited public donations to pay for a party and a tree; the first campaign raised about $10,000.¹ Crown Center’s own account gives the original name as The Mayor’s Municipal Christmas Tree Fund and credits it with helping more than 8,000 needy children during Crittenden’s term.³

The two accounts of that first tree differ on where it stood. The Kansas City Public Library reports that on Christmas morning children arrived at Convention Hall to find “the largest tree that was obtainable… surrounded with baskets of provisions for needy families and with heaps of candy and toys for children.”¹ Crown Center’s history states that Crittenden “oversaw the first official city tree at City Hall in 1908.”³ Both are recorded here; neither has been reconciled against a primary source. “

The first party was overrun. Word spread beyond the city, children arrived from surrounding areas, some hid the stamps on their hands to collect a second basket, and roughly two thousand children went home empty-handed; they were issued vouchers redeemable the next day.¹ Crittenden declared the party a success anyway and promised its return.

The party years (1909–1955)

The Mayor’s Christmas Tree Association ran the event annually thereafter, and it held two distinctions worth noting in a city whose twentieth-century politics were defined first by Democratic machine rule and then by Republican reform: the organization stayed non-partisan, and although public life in Kansas City was racially segregated in many respects during this period, the Mayor’s Christmas Tree parties were open to “all nationalities, creeds, colors and races.”¹

The mayor, or another dignitary, played Santa Claus. Vaudeville shows and pageants entertained the children in the early years, later replaced largely by motion pictures. The parties were held at Convention Hall until 1935, when they moved to the newly opened Municipal Auditorium.¹

Bartle’s changes and the first lighting ceremony (1955–1957)

Mayor H. Roe Bartle made two significant changes. In 1955 he directed part of the organization’s fundraising toward the city’s elderly and disabled residents; gift delivery to children in need continued, but the parties ceased.¹

In 1957 he replaced them with the lighting ceremony that survives today. On the evening of December 12, 1957, a crowd of about a hundred gathered at Auditorium Plaza — today’s Barney Allis Plaza — to watch Bartle illuminate a 35-foot tree. Just before throwing the switch he said, “This will be Kansas City’s Christmas tree,” calling it a symbol of love for fellow citizens and a reminder that those in need had not been forgotten. The 42-member Bendix Coraleers sang carols.¹

Moves: Gillham Park to Crown Center

From 1959 until 1972 the tree stood in Gillham Park. In 1973 the city moved it to Crown Center, where it has been ever since and where the lighting ceremony is held each year on the Friday following Thanksgiving.¹³

The anniversary count is slightly inconsistent across sources. The 2022 ornament was described as honoring “the 50th anniversary of the ceremony’s move to Crown Center,” which implies 1972, while both the Library’s narrative and Crown Center’s own history give 1973.¹³ KCTV5 reported the 2025 ceremony as the 53rd at Crown Center, which is consistent with 1973 counting inclusively.⁴

The 1973 ceremony nearly did not happen. Responding to the Middle East oil embargo, President Richard Nixon asked Americans to conserve energy by curtailing holiday lighting, and Mayor Charles Wheeler announced the tree would stay dark; the Plaza Lights went off three days after Thanksgiving. When the Nixons then announced they would preside over the lighting of the National Christmas Tree on the White House lawn, Kansas City organizers took it as an all-clear. The Plaza lights came back on and Wheeler set the tree lighting for December 14. Both displays kept limited hours that year.¹

How the tree is sourced

The Mayor’s Christmas Tree is not a locally cut tree. It is donated and shipped in. The 2025 tree was a 100-foot Douglas fir donated by Cascade Timber Consulting, Inc. of Oregon, which travelled roughly 2,000 miles to Kansas City, arriving at Crown Center on the morning of Thursday, November 6, 2025, and being raised on its stand the following morning.³⁵ Crown Center describes the tree as one of the tallest in the nation.³

No published account fetched for this page describes a formal nomination or selection process — how a particular tree is chosen in a given year, and whether the donor has varied over time, is not documented here. “

The lighting ceremony

The ceremony is free and held on Crown Center Square on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The 2025 edition ran to a now-standard format: local entertainment on the stage from 6 p.m., then Crown Center president Stacey Paine, Mayor Quinton Lucas, and a group of guests counting down to the switch, followed by fireworks.⁵⁶

The mayor traditionally flips the switch but often shares the honor. Chiefs, Royals, and Sporting KC players have done it, as have Kansas City-rooted celebrities including Janelle Monáe, Tech N9ne, Eric Stonestreet, and Rob Riggle. In 2021 Kevin Strickland — exonerated that November after 42 years’ imprisonment for a 1979 murder he did not commit — lit the tree with Mayor Lucas beside him.¹

Since 2024 the lighting has also opened the first weekend of the Hallmark Christmas Experience at Crown Center, an expanded seasonal program of synchronized light shows, projections on the surrounding buildings, and appearances by Hallmark Channel actors.⁴³

The ornaments and what the Fund does

The Fund’s most visible revenue source is an annual commemorative ornament, a practice that began in 1981.¹ Each ornament is designed by Hallmark artists and creative staff and crafted from the wood of the previous year’s Mayor’s Christmas Tree.²³ They are sold at Crown Center Customer Service and the Hallmark Visitors Center, with limited quantities of some prior years’ designs available at Customer Service.³

The 2025 ornament, “Sweet Snowman,” was designed by Hallmark artist Sheyda Best, made from the wood of the 2024 tree, and went on sale at 10 a.m. on November 28, 2025, for $19.95. The 2024 ornament raised more than $50,000 for the Fund.⁶ In July 2025 Crown Center presented Mayor Lucas with a check for more than $55,000 from ornament sales — described as its largest such donation, and attributed to the more than 100,000 people who visited the previous year’s Hallmark Christmas Experience.⁷

The Mayor’s Christmas Tree Association today benefits senior citizens, people with disabilities, and children, through gift cards, Christmas gifts, and holiday parties hosted by the Parks Department.² Donations can also be made directly to the Association online or by mail to the mayor’s office at City Hall.²³ The grocery and toy baskets of the early decades have been replaced by these modern forms of giving, but the Fund’s stated purpose is unchanged: to help Kansas Citians in need mark the season.¹³

Cultural significance

The Mayor’s Christmas Tree is one of two large-scale holiday light traditions that structure the Kansas City season, the other being the Plaza Lights on the Country Club Plaza. The two are distinct in character: the Plaza display is a commercial district outlining itself in light, while the Mayor’s Tree is a municipal charity object — a single tree standing for a fund administered out of the mayor’s office, with an unbroken institutional line back to 1908 and an informal one to the 1870s.

Its move to Crown Center in 1973 also ties the tradition to Hallmark Cards, whose artists design the ornaments and whose Crown Center development hosts the tree — one more instance of the company’s long civic investment in the city.

Sources

Kansas City Public Library / The Kansas City Star, “What’s Your KCQ?” — Michael Wells, “How long has Kansas City had a Mayor’s Christmas Tree?”, November 18, 2022 — Confirms: Mayor George M. Shelley’s 1878 grocery baskets (about a thousand) and 50 cords of firewood stacked in Market Square; his 1925 recollection quoted; the Turner Hall party the following year and its discontinuation under Charles A. Chace; Thomas T. Crittenden Jr. restoring Christmas giving in 1908 after serving on the Fraternal Order of Eagles committee; creation of the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund; first campaign raising about $10,000; the first party at Convention Hall and the roughly two thousand children turned away with vouchers; the Association’s non-partisanship and openness to “all nationalities, creeds, colors and races”; parties at Convention Hall until 1935, then Municipal Auditorium; H. Roe Bartle redirecting funds to the elderly and disabled in 1955 and ending the parties; the first lighting ceremony December 12, 1957, at Auditorium Plaza, 35-foot tree, crowd of about a hundred, Bartle’s “This will be Kansas City’s Christmas tree” quotation, and the Bendix Coraleers; Gillham Park 1959–1972; move to Crown Center in 1973 with the ceremony on the Friday after Thanksgiving; the 1973 oil-embargo near-cancellation, Mayor Charles Wheeler, and the December 14 lighting; celebrity switch-flippers including Janelle Monáe, Tech N9ne, Eric Stonestreet, Rob Riggle, and Kevin Strickland in 2021; the annual ornament sale beginning in 1981; Hallmark artist Sheyda Best designing the 2022 ornament marking the 50th anniversary of the move to Crown Center. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸
City of Kansas City, Missouri — “Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund.” — Confirms: the George Shelley origin legend as the city tells it; the tradition handed down from mayor to mayor; the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Association today benefiting senior citizens, persons with disabilities, and children with gift cards, Christmas gifts, and holiday parties hosted by the Parks Department; the ornament “made by Hallmark artists and creative staff from the wood of last year’s Mayor’s Christmas Tree”; online donation to the Association. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Crown Center — “The Mayor’s Christmas Tree” (visitor handout, PDF) — Confirms: Crown Center has hosted the tree for more than 50 years, on Crown Center Square; the tree is the symbol of the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund; “Kansas Citians have benefitted from the fund since Mayor Thomas Crittenden Jr. oversaw the first official city tree at City Hall in 1908”; the original name “The Mayor’s Municipal Christmas Tree Fund”; more than 8,000 needy children helped during Crittenden’s term; the tree on Crown Center Square since 1973; the 2025 tree standing 100 feet tall and described as one of the tallest in the nation; the 2025 Douglas fir donated by Cascade Timber Consulting Inc. of Oregon; the tree as centerpiece of the Hallmark Christmas Experience; commemorative ornaments made from the previous year’s tree wood, sold at Crown Center Customer Service and the Hallmark Visitors Center with limited prior-year stock; donation by mail to the mayor at City Hall, 414 E. 12th St. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹
KCTV5 — “Mayor’s Christmas Tree Lighting kicks off a month of lights at Crown Center,” November 29, 2025 — Confirms: Crown Center as the site of the lighting “for 53 years now”; the second year the lighting also opened the Hallmark Christmas Experience; Mayor Quinton Lucas joined on stage by Hallmark movie stars; synchronized light show with projections on surrounding buildings; the 100-foot tree. ↩ ↩²
FOX 4 Kansas City (WDAF-TV) — Olivia Johnson, “100-foot Christmas tree arrives in heart of Kansas City after traveling 2,000 miles,” November 6, 2025 — Confirms: the 2025 tree travelled 2,000 miles from Oregon and arrived Thursday morning, November 6, 2025; 100 feet tall; raised on its stand at Crown Center Square the following morning at 10 a.m.; not lit until after Thanksgiving; the November 28 lighting at 6 p.m. with Crown Center president Stacey Paine, Mayor Quinton Lucas, and Hallmark stars; free admission; Crown Center home to the tree for over half a century; the tree’s wood turned into commemorative ornaments sold the following year to support the Fund. ↩ ↩²
FOX 4 Kansas City (WDAF-TV) — “KC Crown Center Christmas events: Tree lighting, Santa & more.” — Confirms: the ceremony format — local entertainment from 6 p.m., then Mayor Lucas and guests counting down, fireworks following; the 2025 tree from Oregon; the 2025 ornament “Sweet Snowman” on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, November 28, at Crown Center Customer Service and the Hallmark Visitors Center for $19.95; designed by Hallmark artist Sheyda Best and crafted from the wood of the 2024 tree; proceeds supporting the Fund; the previous year’s ornament sales raising more than $50,000. ↩ ↩²
KCTV5 — “Crown Center celebrates Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund with record donation,” July 18, 2025 — Confirms: Crown Center presenting Mayor Quinton Lucas a check for more than $55,000 from ornament sales, described as its biggest donation yet; attributed to more than 100,000 visitors to the previous year’s Hallmark Christmas Experience, per Crown Center president Stacey Paine; the Fund benefiting senior citizens, children, and people with disabilities. ↩