Candlelight Christmas

Tuesday night, with my sister and her family, we took our kids to This Is The Place for the Candlelight Christmas experience. It was worth every penny we spent for admission. It was so neat to see Christmas as it was in a simpler time. We read all the time about all the sacrifices and hardships the pioneers endured, but to actually see how they lived and what they did for fun really drove it home for me.

There was a fun train ride that took you to different parts of the village. If you go, dress warm with thermals, hats and gloves....it's FRIGID up there at the mouth of the canyon!! Our first stop, we gathered around a big fire to get warm. It was really quite cozy! Each house or building we went in had REAL people dressed up as pioneers who talked about different things. We went into Deseret News and were able to see how papers were printed on a press. They gave the kids a copy of what the first commercialized Christmas card looked like. At the end, there is an AWESOME display where you can go see Father Christmas in his sleigh up on the rooftop of ZCMI! There were even REAL reindeer for the kids to see. I won't bore you with the rest of the details, but I would STRONGLY encourage all of you who read this (who live in Utah) to take your families to this. Weeknights are the best when the crowds are small and you can actually go inside and enjoy the ambiance of each little house while the kids do their craft. We were told that weekends are crazy and crowded....so avoid them if possible.

It was very humbling to walk into these teeny tiny houses, in one case, a one room house, and see how the pioneers lived. There were plenty of fun activities for the kids to do - mostly by candlelight. I heard a few comments about how hard it was to see what they were doing. There were only a few buildings with electricity. It was interesting to hear the kids get excited because there was "real" light. They have NO CLUE how easy we have it now days. I think so often, we take the simple, everyday things in life for granted - like our electricity and our great, big, everyone-has-their-own-bedroom, heated homes. We get so caught up in wanting this or that because what we have isn't good enough.


I hope you enjoy the pictures i tried to take. I didn't even think about taking my tripod with me, so the pictures are blurry, but at least you get the idea! This is probably the funnest (is that even a real word?) take on Christmas I've experienced in a long time. It brought back so many happy, fun, loving memories of being at the Lion House with my grandparents and all of my aunts, uncles and cousins for our family Christmas party. There's something about the big hearth, glowing fire and family that really strikes a tender chord inside my heart.


May we all find the happiness this time of year brings as we gather with our families to celebrate the birth of our Savior, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. God bless each and every one of you this holiday season.