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It felt like I won the lottery when I received them in the mail: four tickets to see my long-beloved Muppets join the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for their annual Christmas concert in Salt Lake City. That’s because I literally did win a lottery to get the tickets. Last night they kicked off a short series of shows with a public dress rehearsal. Here are a few quick thoughts.

I confess my heart was all aflutter seeing Big Bird take the stand to conduct the choir and orchestra for one of the show’s bits. He was a remarkably commanding presence in the cavernous Conference Center—the other Muppets were teeny by comparison and hard to make out from my balcony section 12 perspective but the giant yellow bird filled the space. The guest conductor motif isn’t new—think of another holiday offering, Mr. Kruegger’s Christmas, in which Jimmy Stewart daydreams himself holding the baton. Kruegger may be schmaltzy, but the film still gets to me. Its contrast between the free-wheeling sleigh-riding choir with Stewart at the front and the humble manger scene with Stewart hidden back in the dark shadows is quite moving. Stewart himself declares the divinity of the Christ child and seeks healing at an imagined Bethlehem. He’s with the choir, and he’s there with the Christ.

Contrast this with the Muppets. The performance was made up of a series of clusters: some Sesame Street style gags and secular Christmas songs and medleys alternating with overtly religious-themed offerings. If I recall correctly, when broadway star Santino Fontana (also of Disney’s Frozen fame) sang Alfred Burt’s “Some Children See Him” the Muppets had already shuffled off stage:

Some children see Him lily white,

The baby Jesus born this night.

Some children see Him lily white,

With tresses soft and fair.

Some children see Him bronzed and brown,

The Lord of heav’n to earth come down.

Some children see Him bronzed and brown,

With dark and heavy hair. Some children see Him almond-eyed,

This Savior whom we kneel beside.

Some children see Him almond-eyed,

With skin of yellow hue.

Some children see Him dark as they,

Sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray.

Some children see him dark as they,

And, ah! they love Him, too! The children in each different place

Will see the baby Jesus’ face

Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,

And filled with holy light.

O lay aside each earthly thing

And with thy heart as offering,

Come worship now the infant King.

‘Tis love that’s born tonight!

Some of the language about race is certainly quaint, but the idea that there is more than a “lily white” Jesus, that in many ways we project our beings and lives onto the Savior, is something that can stand to be emphasized more in Mormon discourse. (Incidentally, the latest Mormon Studies Review includes a review of a great book called The Color of Christ that talks about such things.)

And so it went throughout the performance. Cookie Monster was on a monomaniacal search for cookies, only be reminded by Elmo that Christmas was about “MORE” than that. (The word “MORE” was a repeated theme, and usually appeared on the teleprompter in ALL CAPS.) When Cookie broke out his signature song he was reminded that “C” is for more than “Cookie,” it’s also for “Christmas,” “Concert,” and “Choir.” When a full plate of chocolate chip cookies finally appeared, Cookie decided to share with everyone. The Muppets enjoined the audience to carry Christmas cheer with them throughout the year and to remember that Christmas is about MORE than lights, treats, and gifts. But affirmations of the divinity of Christ were delivered by the choir and Santino Fontana, who read the nativity excerpt from Luke 2, with the Muppets attending to other important duties (like Grover running the sound and light board). And Count von Count teamed up with MoTab organist Richard Elliot for an incredible and witty variations on “The Twelve Days of Christmas” that brought the packed house to a mid-show standing ovation.

I don’t want to come across like I missed the point of the show, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There was much in the way of celebrating Jesus Christ throughout the program even while the Muppets, the cornerstone of PBS, hewed to their line of celebrating Christmas without directly emphasizing Jesus Christ. I believe it’s a great strength that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir can reach out to a more ecumenical audience and work with performers who don’t necessarily share theological confessions. They’ve been doing so for decades on the Sunday morning Music and the Spoken Word broadcast, after all. Church leaders have sometimes expressed concern with the Choir’s “veering into secular music,” while other people lament the Choir’s embracing a spectacle-oriented performance ethic. (Mack Wilburg will never make it as an actor. Trust me.) Both of these points are among the themes discussed in Michael Hicks’s forthcoming book The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015, pre-publication page 120, a fuller review is forthcoming but let me say right now: buy the book).

As for me, I was happy to see the Muppets team up with America’s Choir (as Ronald Reagan famously dubbed them), and the LDS Church’s Choir mostly because I’m a big Muppets fan. But I also appreciated the way they navigated the sacred and the secular—two indispensable and inseparable contexts of my own life experience—during a unified performance in the spirit of Christmas.

If you weren’t lucky enough to win tickets or don’t live near enough to even try the concert is set to appear on PBS sometime in the future.