Christmas at the Oakland Temple

I love the sky behind the beautiful Oakland Temple. This is my first Christmas season in a warm climate (don't worry- I will have a white Christmas in UT on Friday) and so I thought it was interesting some of the decorations that they had here at the temple grounds.

The nativity was placed over the water

A close up of the stable

I just thought that this was great- they placed additional lights on the tree to make it look even more like a palm tree :-) This shows how Christmas in a warmer climate differs

The nativity looks so beautiful all lit up. One evening, they also had a LIVE nativity in another area- they had people actually re-enacting the scene. Unfortunately, we got there just as it was ending so we didn't have time for a photo.

And the palm trees lining the walkway.

The Oakland temple has multiple concerts going on each night in each of the different buildings. We saw the oratorio "Gloria" by Lex de Azavedo. He actually was present at the performance and gave a discussion of it. We only heard the end because of an accident on the freeway. The performance got better as it progressed (the first two numbers were kind of off) and we were glad that we made the drive. The tenor who was the angel Gabriel was AMAZING. He had such an incredible voice- and fortunately, he had a fairly significant role so we heard from him more than once. I love the Christmas season for all of the holiday concerts and the lights.