Fireworks shoot from the InterContinental Kansas City hotel after a lighting ceremony at the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo. Thursday night's ceremony marked the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

Kansas City, Mo. ? A flip of a big switch at Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza on Thursday ushered in the Christmas shopping season for the 77th year.

Crowds lined the upscale, 14-square-block shopping center for the annual Thanksgiving lighting ceremony, which this year came less than an hour before the start of the Chiefs-Broncos football game at Arrowhead Stadium.

The Plaza lighting was carried live over large video screens at Arrowhead, further exciting an already frenzied crowd awaiting the game between division rivals Kansas City and Denver – the first Thanksgiving night game at the stadium.

Revelers were treated to unseasonably warm conditions for a Thanksgiving Day, with temperatures in the mid-60s at the 6 p.m. start of the lighting ceremony.

The display consists of nearly 280,000 lights that would cover about 80 miles if laid end-to-end. The Plaza lighting tradition began in 1925 with one strand of 16 lights over a single doorway, and the first actual lighting ceremony took place five years later.

Only once since then – in 1973, when President Nixon called on all Americans to refrain from using Christmas lights to reduce dependence on foreign oil imports – have the lights not been turned on for the holiday season.

This year’s ceremony honored three traditions: the Plaza lights, the Chiefs and Kansas City jazz. Chiefs Hall-of-Famers Bobby Bell and Willie Lanier joined Chiefs Chairman Clark Hunt and his wife, Tavia, to flip the switch.