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Show Christmas lights to switch on SALT LAKE CITY -The traditional Christmas Christ-mas lights display on Salt Lake City's Temple Square will officially get underway with a brief outdoor ceremony Nov. 26. Philip Sonntag, director of Temple Square visitors centers for the Church of Jesus Christ , of Latter-day Saints, said the program will beign at 5:30 p.m. on the patio of the North Visitors Center. This year's display of lights continues a tradition which began in 1965, Sonntag said. President Ezra Taft Benson of the Church's Council of Twelve Apostles, will deliver a brief Christmas message and will then close the switch which will turn on the 200,000 tiny lights strung along the walks and through the trees and shrubs of the square, which is visited by more than two million people annually. Selected singers and instrumentalists from the Mormon Youth Symphony Sym-phony and Chorus, unde the direction of Robert C. Bowden, will provide music for the Christmas lights programs. Complementing the lights will be an automated nativity scene on the lawn between the visitors center and the Tabernacle, Sonntag said. The Nov. 26 ceremony will begin a month-long series of Christmas activities ac-tivities on Temple Square, including concerts con-certs by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Dec. 18 and 21; the Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus, Dec. 17; guest choirs; continuous showings of the motion picture, "Mr. Krueger's Christmas," starring Jimmy Stewart; and the Oratorio Society of Utah presentation of Handel's "Messiah" Dec. 11 and 12. Ther will also be a Christmas eve service in the Tabernacle, featuring a message from Elder-Marion Elder-Marion D. Hanks, member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and president the Salt Lake Temple.. |
