My Secret

Responding to my immediately previous post, a reader asks  “What’s the secret to getting tickets every year?”

It’s a good question.  Tickets are very, very difficult to get.  There is huge demand, and there are only 21,000 seats in the Conference Center.  With three performances, that’s 63,000 people who get in.  I’m guessing that there are more people who would like to go but can’t.  The concerts are typically “sold out” — although they’re free — within the first few minutes that tickets are available online.

Her question makes me realize, however, that I may have inadvertently added yet another weapon to my most unreasonable critics.  They’ll see my apparent ability to get into the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert every year as yet another black mark against my character.  Devoted to the legend that they’ve carefully crafted over at least the past decade and a half of me as a corrupt and cynically mercenary liar who reaps enormous rewards both from the Church and from a large class of mindless dupes who pay for my luxurious travel and fine dining around the world, they have likely already begun to fantasize about how a ticket to the Christmas concert probably arrives, as a special bonus, with every tenth gold bar that is sent to me by the Strengthening Church Members Committee for my spying on Saints who dare to think for themselves and for my mean-spirited mendacity in defending the spurious claims of Joseph Smith and the Restoration.

So I had better clarify.

In fact, I don’t get tickets every year.  Come to think of it, although my wife and I hover over our computers when tickets to the annual Christmas concert become available and desperately try to land at least a pair of them, we’ve consistently failed, personally, to land any tickets for quite a few years in a row now.  Indeed, come to think of it, we actually did miss the concert in 2014 at which the Muppets were the guests.

But how, with that one exception, have we managed to go annually for years and years now?

It’s simple:  We have friends, neighbors, and relatives.  We have brothers and sisters in law, and so do our friends, neighbors, and relatives.  All of us have nieces and nephews.  And they, too, are on their computers when the tickets become available.  And, thus, between us, we always come up with at least some tickets, including some that the lucky winners don’t need for themselves or their immediate families.  And, thus, we make it work.

That’s how we do it.