Keepsake Christmas Stories: Twenty Years with The Tabernacle Choir

For me, the Christmas concerts of The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square have never been simply another performance on the calendar. Since joining the Choir in 2010, I have watched music, narration, dance, lighting, scenery, and thousands of individual acts of preparation come together to tell stories of faith, generosity, courage, and the birth of Jesus Christ.

Originally published December 5, 2021. Substantially revised and expanded July 2026.

Why the Stories Matter

A Christmas concert can offer beautiful music without narration, but a well-chosen story gives the audience another path into the meaning of the season. A story places generosity inside a human life. It turns history into a relationship. It helps listeners imagine the decisions, losses, sacrifices, and moments of grace behind the songs.

The collection Keepsake Christmas Stories: Holiday Favorites as Performed with The Tabernacle Choir gathers twenty years of narrated stories from these productions. The selections range from literary classics such as “The Gift of the Magi” to accounts connected with beloved hymns and remarkable people. Together, they show how many kinds of stories can lead an audience toward hope.

The Scale of a Conference Center Christmas Concert

The Conference Center allows the Choir and its collaborators to create scenes that would be impossible in a traditional concert hall. From the Choir seats, I have watched enormous scenic elements move into place, dancers fill the stage, narrators step into carefully lit worlds, and technical effects appear at exactly the right musical moment.

What the audience sees for a few seconds may require weeks or months of planning. Singers rehearse music and staging. The Orchestra at Temple Square prepares complex scores. Directors, designers, technicians, costumers, dancers, ushers, and many others contribute work that remains mostly invisible when everything succeeds.

That scale is impressive, but the purpose is not spectacle for its own sake. The production serves the message. The best moments use every available tool to make a familiar truth feel newly personal.

Gail Halvorsen and the Candy Bomber

One of the stories that means the most to me is the account of Colonel Gail Halvorsen, the Berlin Candy Bomber. During the Berlin Airlift, he dropped small candy-filled parachutes to children living in a divided and war-scarred city. A simple act of kindness became a symbol of friendship and hope.

The Christmas concert presentation was narrated by Tom Brokaw and included Gail Halvorsen himself. At one point, tiny parachutes descended from the ceiling of the Conference Center. The effect was memorable because it translated history into something immediate: thousands of people watched a gesture of kindness fall gently into the room.

The story had a personal connection for me long before the concert. I met Colonel Halvorsen as a teenager. Later, I served as a missionary in Germany and visited Berlin. Those experiences made the performance feel like several parts of my life meeting in the same place.

Many Roads into the Christmas Message

The stories in the collection do not all approach Christmas in the same way. Some are humorous. Some are historical. Some center on sacrifice, family, music, or unexpected generosity. That variety reflects the Christmas concerts themselves. The season contains celebration and grief, wonder and memory, pageantry and quiet devotion.

A story such as “The Gift of the Magi” asks what love is willing to give. The account behind “It Is Well with My Soul” places a hymn of faith beside profound loss. The Candy Bomber story shows how a small gift can carry meaning far beyond its material value. Each story offers a different answer to the question: What does hope look like when it enters an ordinary human life?

What I Have Learned from Singing These Concerts

• Preparation creates freedom. The most moving moments feel spontaneous because hundreds of people have prepared carefully.
• Music carries memory. A melody can bring a person, place, or feeling back with extraordinary force.
• Stories make large themes personal. Peace, sacrifice, and charity become easier to understand when we see one person choose them.
• Tradition can still surprise us. Familiar carols gain new meaning when placed beside a fresh story or visual image.
• The message matters more than the scale. The lights, sets, and effects are most successful when they direct attention toward faith, generosity, and Jesus Christ.

Add the Stories to Your Christmas Season

I enjoyed revisiting these narratives in book form because reading creates a different kind of attention than watching a large production. A family can read one story at a time, pause to discuss it, and return to favorites from year to year.

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More Christmas Music and Stories

Keepsake Christmas Stories belongs to the “Other Christmas Writing” branch of this site: a Tabernacle Choir reflection rather than one of Michael’s Advent anthologies or the An Advent Carols Countdown devotional. Explore the complete Christmas-project map at Christmas Books, Stories & Music.