RonnieAdventure #0338 - Salt Lake City Christmas Lights -2018

Heather surprised everyone and ordered a nice snow storm for the day following my birthday - she wanted us to remember what winter was like in South Dakota where we grew up! (What she did not know was that unlike the nice, large fluffy flakes that floated to the ground, in South Dakota when it snows the temperature is 20 degrees below zero and the 50 Mile-Per-Hour wind blows the snow horizontally.) Since work fascinates me, and I had shoveled snow before, I watched Brent shovel the walks and drive! And then, after cleaning the drive, Carter and Sophia modeled their new Christmas clothes.

Once we were in the Christmas spirit, we decided to visit Macy's (formerly Z.C.M.I.) at City Creek Mall where they have large Christmas ornaments made of candy hanging in the windows. Each ornament is about 3-4 feet in diameter. (The mall received its name because the creek that ran through the City was channeled into a small ditch and the water now flows down the ditch through the mall.)

The large candy ornaments are only visible from outside of the building; so we were really cold after standing in the sub-freezing weather. Since the Joseph Smith Building was just across the street to the north, we sought refuge from the cold in the lobby and listened to a children's choir that was performing somewhere on the second floor. (We did not see them, but we could hear them as they performed Christmas songs.) We later came back to a cafe in the Joseph Smith Building for some really delicious turkey/cranberry sandwiches.

Temple Square is adjacent to the west side of the Joseph Smith Building and is considered to be one of the premier Christmas light displays in the the United States. It is unknown how many Christmas lights are on Temple Square, but in 1997 there were about 800,000 lights and the number has expanded since that date. It takes workers about four months to hang all of the lights and about two months to take them down. The workers are composed of Temple Square's ground maintenance crews and hundreds of volunteers.

Temple Square contains 35 acres of land, so by the time we had walked as far as the Tabernacle my Las Vegas feet felt like icicles. There were no performances in the Tabernacle that evening, but the door was unlocked, so we slipped inside to get warmed up. 

From the Tabernacle it is only a short distance to the Temple Square Visitor's Center, so we walked over to see a replica of the Christus statue that is on display. Also on display was a model of what Jerusalem is believed to have looked like at the time Jesus was born. And, outside of the Visitor Center was a Nativity scene that was covered with REAL snow!

By the time we left the Visitor Center, the temperature was in the high teens; so we decided to go back to the Joseph Smith Building to get something to eat. However, along the way I did have to stop to take a few pictures while everyone else ran ahead; and, of course, I did have a difficult finding them after taking pictures! 

On the sidewalk outside of Temple Square, Santa was playing Rock-and-Roll Christmas music and, for a fee, he would play one of your favorite Christmas songs while someone took your picture with him. Nothing like commercializing Christmas!