A wonderful evening with a full house. Thanks to everyone who came out to share a special time of Christmas music. Merry Christmas!

It was a late evening and at the end of it all we have a stage ready for the concert tomorrow night. After, of course, we load in all of the sound, lighting and musical gear.

Tonight we begin preparing the stage for the Celebrate Christmas event on Saturday evening. Q Design will be helping us by setting up the piping and fabric to hang the stage curtains.

Celebrate Christmas is coming soon.

Rob is our lead vocalist. And when he rehearses, he works up quite the appetite. Good thing there was lots of food for the team yesterday.

A great rehearsal yesterday. And Lorraine did a terrific job with the refreshments.

Echo and friends are getting together this afternoon to work through the second rehearsal call. Celebrate Christmas is only two weeks away. This is our rehearsal space.

From the National Christmas Tree Association:

The National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA) has officially recognized the year 1510 as the first recorded instance of a decorated Real Christmas Tree, a tradition born in the city of Riga, Latvia. Entities all over the world also have recognized this milestone.

Not a lot is known about the first Christmas Tree in Riga, other than it was placed in the public marketplace and decorated by the men of the Order of the Blackheads, a long-time merchant’s guild. The men wore black hats and after the ceremony, they burned the tree. Legend has it that the first Riga tree was decorated with paper flowers. Today, a plaque marks the spot where the original tree stood.

The tradition of the first Christmas Tree is sometimes credited to Martin Luther, with the story that he was walking in the woods when he was awestruck by the beauty of the moonlight on the evergreen trees and took home the first Christmas Tree to his family. Luther reportedly decorated the tree with candles to recreate the beautiful effect of the moonlight on the branches. However, historians believe Martin Luther’s tree was decorated in northern Germany a few decades after the one in Latvia.

Religious symbolism – Christian and pagan – inspired many of the decorations that adorn Christmas trees. The evergreen tree itself is said to symbolize Christ, life, nature and the Holy Trinity. Live evergreen trees were often brought into homes during the harsh winters as a reminder to inhabitants that soon their crops would grow again.

The pagans of northern Europe celebrated the winter solstice, known as Yule. Yule was symbolic of the pagan sun god Mithras being born and was observed on the shortest day of the year. As the sun god grew and matured, the days became longer and warmer. It was customary to light a candle to encourage Mithras, and the sun, to reappear next year.

The term Christmas Tree first appeared in Strassburg, Alsace, in 1604, though Christian families incorporated the trees into their celebration of the birth of Christ much earlier. Paper roses that adorned many trees in the 1500s are said to represent the Virgin Mary. During the 1600s churches used Christmas Trees to help teach the story of creation, decorating them with apples to represent the tree in the Garden of Eden. In the 1700s, trees decorated with gilded nuts and cookies were often referred to as “sugar trees.”

In our Christmas concerts we include clips from some of our favourite movies. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation keeps giving us some great material to include in the multimedia portion of the concert.

A shot of Rob from last year’s Celebrate Christmas concert.