Tonight, Matt, Al and Savannah will stay up light to cover one of their favorite stories.

The Today Show team will be working nights as Rockefeller Center Christmas Treeis lit up live on NBC.

For the morning show team, this is their favorite thing to cover all year.

“If you’re looking to get in the holiday spirit, it’s contagious,” Savannah Guthrie said “It’s truly magnificent once the lights come on.”

“We cover so many stories that are difficult, especially over the last couple of days and weeks,” says Matt Lauer. “But on this night we’re surrounded by a couple of hundred thousand people. Whatever they’ve been through in the past couple of weeks, they gather together and, when that switch is flipped and those lights come on, everyone claps and smiles and I think that’s just wonderful.”

“The tree is literally a beacon of hope, of faith, of good will, of the best of humanity,” says Al Roker, who began hosting the tree lighting in 1983 when it was simply a ceremony that took place during the last five minutes of Live at Five, a local NBC news program.

Guthrie adds, “It’s a brief respite to be thankful, enjoy life, to gaze at something beautiful and to give a hug to a colleague.”

Ahhhhhh.....Now we know why Matt Lauer likes it so much.

H/T Parade