See how the Country Club Plaza holiday lighting ceremony has evolved through the decades
The annual Country Club Plaza lighting ceremony began with one man, a ladder, and a modest string of 16 lights strung across the doorway of one building on Christmas Day in 1925.
In 1930, the plaza hosted its first lighting ceremony and has continued to do so every year since on Thanksgiving Day in Kansas City, except 1973 when President Richard Nixon asked for the discontinuation of lights that year to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil. Due to the pandemic, the event was a broadcast event only and officials discouraged large groups from assembling in 2020.
While the Kansas City Star’s archives do not have pictures from those early days, there are plenty of photographs to share through the years of the ceremony as tens of thousands of people join in the celebration as the switch is flipped to illuminate hundreds of lights outlining the plaza’s Spanish-style architecture against a dramatic background of fireworks.
Watch the video slideshow to see the lighting ceremonies through the decades.
This story was originally published November 21, 2023 at 12:00 PM.
