Traditions are the best, especially new ones!

Last year Jason’s family started a new tradition where each year during the holiday season the family attends a Christmas concert, play, or program together…so fun!

So last year in order to kick off the first annual Christmas tradition we went to the Kurt Bestor concert.  Kurt Bestor plays the piano and puts on a live Christmas program each year at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City.  The show draws more than 20,000 people and features 45 musicians, awesome lighting, and a special guests (which was his dad this year) who reads The Night Before Christmas to the audience before the show is over.  We had a great time!

As you walk out of the concert this is what you see.  It was beautiful.

This year we went to the Forgotten Carols by Michael McLean and it was wonderful.  The play is about  Constance who is a middle-aged nurse whose empty life is changed by a new patient who tells her the story of Christ’s birth as told from the perspectives of lesser-known characters in the nativity story.  Their personal accounts help her discover what the world has forgotten about Christmas, and open her heart to the joy of season.  There are so many touching moments in the play.  Be sure if you see it to bring a tissue box.

My favorite part was at the very end when Michael McLean asks everyone in the audience to reverently sing “we can be together forever some day, we can be together forever someday, we can be together forever someday.”  As everyone is singing, he asks you to think about the people you will be together with forever someday.  It was such an amazing moment where I felt the truth of the statement and the joy of the season.