Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
Travel and Religion
Friday with the Tabernacle Choir

Friday with the Tabernacle Choir

Last updated on: December 13, 2025 at 11:11 pm by Dan Peterson

0 Comments

Friday with the Tabernacle Choir 2025-12-13T23:11:23-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The second night of Hanukkah at Jerusalem’s Western (or Wailing) Wall
(Wikimedia Commons photo by Oren Rozen)

This year’s Jewish festival of Hanukkah begins tomorrow evening, Sunday evening, 14 December 2025, and continues through Monday, 22 December 2025. I’m hoping to find our menorah and set it up between now and tomorrow night. Seriously. (I like Passover, too, and have led several seders. They’re great teaching tools.) How much do you know about the holiday? It’s actually rather interesting:

The Associated Press: “What to know about Hanukkah and how it’s celebrated”
The Jerusalem Post: “Hanukkah miracle: Israel discovers evidence of Judah Maccabee’s battlefield near Jerusalem: The site is widely identified with the ancient village of Bet Zecharia, where the Seleucid army and the forces of Judah Maccabee clashed in what is known as the fifth Maccabean battle.”
And an interesting Jewish perspective in the Wall Street Journal: “Holidays Begin at Home: Our Passover and Hanukkah rituals have taught my family the joy of staying put.”

An aerial view of the Herodium (or Herodion), an artificial, conical hill surmounted by the ruins of one of King Herod’s multiple palaces. According to the historian Flavius Josephus, the merry old soul was buried at the Herodium in 4 BC. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Here’s a bit of Christmas-related news from the Babylon Bee: “Planned Parenthood Honors King Herod With Lifetime Achievement Award”

I confess to not being a really enthusiastic fan of all of these movies — nor, really, even of most of them — but you might get some good ideas here: “10 best Christmas movies to stream this holiday season: Looking for the perfect holiday movie night lineup? Explore iconic Christmas films available to stream now”

The Relief Society Building, Salt Lake City, Utah (Wikimedia CC public domain photo)

Following a dinner on the top floor of the Relief Society Building, my wife and I crossed the street to the Conference Center for the 2025 Christmas with the Tabernacle Choir concert. Along with the Tabernacle Choir, the Orchestra at Temple Square and the Bells at Temple Square also performed. The guest artists for the program — which ran Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and which will be partially reprised for the choir’s weekly Sunday morning broadcast — were Stephanie J. Block and her husband, Sebastian Arcelus, along with two Argentine Latter-day Saint artists, the bandoneónist Julián Mansilla and the violinist Leandro Curaba (who, although it wasn’t mentioned in his biography on the program, is currently serving as an area authority Seventy for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

Inside the Conference Center at Christmastime a few years ago, with Laura Osnes in white at center stage (Cell phone photo by my wife)

The program was a varied one. It concluded, of course, as it always does, with a reading from Luke 2 — can there really, seriously, be any legitimate doubt that Latter-day Saints are Christians? I mean, really? — and then with Mack Wilberg’s spectacular arrangement, for choir and orchestra and soloists and Bells at Temple Square and Gabriel’s Trumpets, of the French carol “Angels from the Realms of Glory.”

Inspired by that, as today’s bit of Christmas music I give you a link to a previous performance of “Angels from the Realms of Glory” at the Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas concert. This one, recorded in December 2005, features the illustrious American operatic soprano Renée Fleming and the Tabernacle Choir, under the baton of Craig Jessop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAGrD_gOdgI

Along the way, though, this year’s program also sampled music from Latin America and detoured into a bit of Spanish. (Sebastian Arcelus is partly of Uruguayan descent, and speaks the language fluently.) I quite liked a piece by Astor Piazzolla (and arranged by Julián Mansilla) entitled “Adios, Nonino” (“Farewell, Grandfather”). It was written at the death of his grandfather, and isn’t a particularly Christmas-related piece. But I liked it very much. There were also traditional carols and spirituals, as well as Beethoven and Irving Berlin, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Mendelssohn, and Handel, and a very well received organ solo by Richard Elliott, who is always an audience favorite. And a story about the astronauts of Apollo 8 reading Genesis 1:1-10 to the world from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1968.

Especially in connection with the latter, but also throughout, the visual display for the program was, in some ways, I think, the most ambitious that I’ve ever seen for one of these programs. Enormous panoramas of the cosmos and of Earth from space and of alpine mountain scenes were projected not merely onto the area immediately surrounding the stage and adjacent to the organ pipes but onto the adjacent walls, covering perhaps a hundred or more degrees of the surrounding Conference Center. Pretty spectacular.

The Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square put on a remarkable program each year. I’m glad that the programs are recorded and made available for subsequent years.

Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531-1588), who often chronicles my daily meals, kindly prepared this sketch of Saturday’s hasty and informal lunch for use on my blog. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Now, though, being the notorious gourmand that I am, a self-confessed serial eater, a repeat offender, I’m obliged to write about FOOD: On the way home from Salt Lake City this morning, we seized the opportunity to stop by Siegfried’s Delicatessen, where we took out some Bratwurst and Sauerkraut and Rotkohl — we should have also picked up some Wienerschnitzel and Kartoffelsalat but, for some reason, didn’t — and brought it home. It’s another traditional part of my rather Germanic Christmas celebration. And we dropped by Banbury Cross Donuts and picked up several boxes of their wares — among the best donuts I know, anyway — as gifts for some of our neighbors. I went out this evening to distribute them with a Third-Generation Unit, who sang an unabashed solo of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” at each door until the last one, when the 3GU was suddenly overcome by unaccountable shyness.

Christmas decorations in front of the Salt Lake Temple, a few years ago, before renovation of the Temple began. (Photo by my wife.) I’m told that Latter-day Saints aren’t Christians, though, so I wonder who the statues might represent.

Finally, the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ typically yields an especially bounteous harvest at this season of the year, and 2025 is proving to be no exception:

Deseret News: “Washington Post columnist highlights Latter-day Saint responses to political hatred: Dana Milbank suggested the Church of Jesus Christ ‘may have an answer for our toxic politics’”

In case you’re able to access it, here’s a link to the original article in The Washington Post: “Why Mormonism may have an answer for our toxic politics. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox draws on teachings from his Mormon faith to “disagree better.””

This is relevant: Interfaith America: “Two Governors — a Mormon Republican and a Jewish Democrat — Team Up to Stop Political Violence” And here is a thirty-minute video of the two governors’ conversation with Dana Bash, of CNN: “Political violence traumatized their states. A Republican and a Democratic governor come together with a plea: Tone it down”

Travel and Religion

History and Religion

Previous Post

December 12, 2025

Mary, at Christmastime

Next Post

December 14, 2025 "And is it true?"

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"I have cpnsidered in my mond if the 4 volume Saints could be made into ..."

John Pack Lambert

From Serbia’s “White City,” Belgrade

"DP: “But Mr. Sutherland worries about the fact that our time, when we can communicate ..."

Theodore Brandley

Learning more about a region of ..."

"Another class of memories are of individuals who previously lived. Some of these remembered individuals ..."

PlasmaMiasma

Accounts of Premortality?

"Sutherland's lecture sounds interesting. He seems to restate the Washington consensus that trade brings peace ..."

B. Wilson

Learning more about a region of ..."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which writer besides Solomon and David contributed to Proverbs?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Asaph Agur Nathan Moses