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The highly anticipated 2024 St. Olaf Christmas Festival, Our Hope for Years to Come, will bring thousands of visitors to campus December 6-8.

After being held at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis the last two years, the St. Olaf Christmas Festival is returning to campus this December — just in time for the college’s sesquicentennial. As St. Olaf marks the 150th anniversary of its founding, it’s also celebrating the storied history of the Christmas Festival that has been a beloved tradition on campus since 1912.

The annual Christmas Festival performances, held over three days in Skoglund Auditorium, feature nearly 500 student musicians in the St. Olaf Choir, St. Olaf Chapel Choir, Viking Chorus, Manitou Singers, St. Olaf Cantorei, and the St. Olaf Orchestra. St. Olaf Choir Conductor Anton Armstrong ’78 serves as the artistic director of the Christmas Festival, and he’s bringing this year’s event to life alongside fellow conductors James Bobb, Paolo Debuque, Therees Tkach Hibbard, and Chung Park.

While tickets for this year’s Christmas Festival are sold out, the performance on Sunday, December 8, at 3 p.m. will be streamed live and broadcast on YourClassicalMPR.

A special national broadcast of the St. Olaf Christmas Festival celebrating the college’s sesquicentennial will be distributed by American Public Media. In the Twin Cities, this encore special will air on Monday, December 9, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, December 21, at 3 p.m. An on-demand video will be available the evening of December 18 through christmas.stolaf.edu.

In addition to the Christmas Festival performances, there are a number of other events on campus to celebrate the season. All of these events are free and open to the public:

• Norseman Band Christmas Singalong
  December 6 at 4:30 p.m. in Boe Chapel
• Christmas Bells by the St. Olaf Handbell Choirs
  December 7 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on the second level of Buntrock Commons
• Christmas Festival Warming House
  December 7 and 8 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the Center for Art and Dance
  This special event in honor of the St. Olaf Sesquicentennial will feature gourmet hot chocolate, treats, and a digital exhibit about the history of the Christmas Festival.
• Sunday Service Featuring Music by the St. Olaf Band
  December 8 at 10:30 a.m. in Boe Chapel
• Streamed live online
• Traditional Scandinavian Buffet
• December 6–8 by Reservation in the Buntrock Commons Ballrooms 

Learn more and view previous recordings of past Christmas Festivals at christmas.stolaf.edu.

Over a Century of Singing: The History of the St. Olaf Christmas Festival
On December 17, 1912, a Christmas program was offered to a large gathering of family and friends in Hoyme Memorial Chapel shortly before St. Olaf closed for the holidays. The brief program included a speech by the Reverend R.M. Fjeldstad and special music by tenor Sigurd Erdtman, violinist Adolph Olsen, pianist Eulalie Chenevert, and the Delta Chi Quartet. In the dim light of the chapel — decorated with pine trees harvested in Norway Valley — members of the St. Olaf Choral Union, established in 1902, stood solemnly and sang in Norwegian.

What began so long ago as the “St. Olaf College Christmas Program” evolved into a “Commemoration of Christmas” and, by the 1940s, became the “Christmas Festival at St. Olaf.” Now, 112 years after its first Sunday evening concert in Hoyme Chapel, the Christmas Festival has become a treasured holiday tradition. Today more than 500 student musicians in five choral ensembles and the St. Olaf Orchestra perform a rich repertoire of classic Advent and Christmas compositions along with familiar carols and hymns from around the world, providing eternal messages of hope, peace, and healing. 

Humble Beginnings
The St. Olaf Christmas Festival is one of the longest-running observances of its kind in the world. Its origins date back to F. Melius Christiansen, who became director of music at St. Olaf in 1903 and is credited with founding the St. Olaf Music Department that same year. Under Christiansen’s visionary leadership, hard work, and artistry, the Christmas program ran annually in Hoyme Chapel for its first decade before undergoing a number of changes.

In 1922, to accommodate a growing audience, the concert moved from the chapel to the college gymnasium, located in what is now the Theater Building. That was also the year that the St. Olaf Orchestra first participated in the program, adding a deeper dimension to the overall performance. The concerts generally included a processional, official Christmas greetings by St. Olaf President Lars W. Boe, a Gospel reading, a mix of traditional Christmas carols and lesser-known choral pieces, and the musical gifts of various St. Olaf choirs. There was often at least one Christmas hymn, usually a traditional Christmas carol such as Joy to the World, for the audience to sing, although audience participation didn’t become a regular practice until the late 1920s.

Beautiful Savior first appeared on the program in 1924, but not as the closing or recessional hymn. From 1930 to 1940, a portion of the hymn was sung from the back of the gym after the recessional when the lights were dimmed. After 1950, it came at the end of the program — though not always as the recessional — and there were times in the 1960s and 1970s when it wasn’t sung at all. Today’s audience couldn’t imagine a St. Olaf Christmas Festival concert without Beautiful Savior as its haunting final hymn.

F. Melius Christiansen’s son Olaf became co-director of the St. Olaf Choir in 1941 and, as had become the tradition, artistic director of the Christmas Festival concert, fully taking the helm in 1943 when his father retired. The younger Christiansen made a few subtle changes, including organizing the music around a theme to give the program a cohesive spiritual and artistic sensibility. He also incorporated more contemporary music and American folk hymns. 

New Movements
In 1967 the Christmas Festival concert moved to the newly completed Skoglund Auditorium, where it remains today. When Olaf Christiansen retired in 1968, Professor of Music Kenneth Jennings became the third conductor of the St. Olaf Choir and artistic director of the Christmas Festival. Jennings added his own musical artistry, and under his leadership the St. Olaf Christmas Festival was recognized in the New York Times International Datebook as one of the five significant global holiday events and by the Los Angeles Times as one of World’s Top 30 Events and Festivals in December. Another hallmark of the Festival under Jennings’s leadership was the overall format. He typically structured the Christmas Festival with an individual focus on each of the participating choirs — Manitou Singers, Viking Chorus, St. Olaf Cantorei, St. Olaf Chapel Choir, and St. Olaf Choir — interspersed with several massed choir compositions, selections by the St. Olaf Orchestra, readings, and more traditional Christmas carols with the audience. 

Armstrong, a St. Olaf student in the mid-1970s and member of the St. Olaf Choir under Jennings’s direction, returned to St. Olaf in 1990 as a member of the music faculty and the fourth conductor of the St. Olaf Choir. Armstrong revised the Christmas Festival format so that the programming was more organic. The choirs each did the same number of pieces, but they were spread throughout the concert to give the event more musical diversity. When Armstrong became artistic director, he reduced the St. Olaf Choir’s solo pieces to three selections, a format that has remained in place to this day. The other choirs continued to each perform two solo selections up until 2022, when St. Olaf had the opportunity to host the Christmas Festival for two years at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. This opportunity, which enabled St. Olaf musicians and conductors to share the beloved holiday tradition in a world-class concert space, meant performing the Christmas Festival twice in one day. To best support that performance schedule, the conductors of the other choral ensembles requested reducing their solo selections to one.

This year the St. Olaf Christmas Festival once again returns to campus, timing that is fitting given that the college is celebrating its sesquicentennial — and the rich tradition of music that has been part of campus life for 150 years.

Although the Christmas Festival traditionally had a theme —starting in 1938 with The Morning Star — the theme was typically applied to music that had already been chosen. Armstrong changed this approach by first selecting a theme and then choosing music that fit it best. The festival’s artistic committee, made up of five conductors, the college pastor, and a visual designer, begins planning the St. Olaf Christmas Festival almost immediately after the previous year’s event. Together, they work to bring this cherished celebration to thousands each year. With a spirit of collaboration, Armstrong made the planning a process of lively debate about music, theology, pacing, and message, creating a format that even more strongly highlighted works from nontraditional composers or cultures.

For the five conductors and the hundreds of students who perform in the Christmas Festival each year, a rich heritage and legacy surrounds them. Each December, when the final concert is over and the last notes of Beautiful Savior fade away, the spirit of love and the promise of Christmas linger in the darkened hall. It’s the perennial gift that St. Olaf shares with the world.