On Saturday, 2 Dec, my wife Christine and I joined our brother-in-law Adam and his wife (Christine's sister) Melissa for an afternoon double-date to The Olive Garden restaurant and the Glenn Beck Christmas Show held at Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake City.

The show was awesome. It was cool to see Glenn in person after having become an avid listener and viewer of his radio and TV shows. Without divulging too much about the show, it was basically an exploration into the meaning of Christmas. Glenn used multiple examples and stories from his personal life as he talked about snow, family, peace, gifts, food, and more.

Glenn's actual stage presence was supplemented by a small Christmas set which included a tree, gift boxes, a sofa, and a loveseat. There were eight intelligent moving head lighting instruments hanging above Glenn and I noticed later a lighting engineer at the rear of the house who had lighting visualization software running on a computer connected to a medium-sized DMX console.

The lighting was great -- accentuated by a thin fog produced by a hazer offstage.

Behind and above Glenn's set was a large video screen. Before the show started, several funny pictures and videos played on the screen. One of them was something like this: Word Jumble: VENKI IREDELFNE followed by: ANSWER: The dumbest man in America

One might expect a Glenn Beck stage show to be very political, but it wasn't. What it was, though, was spiritual and probably more so being that it was in Salt Lake City and Beck is a recent convert to the LDS faith.

After the show as over, Glenn said he would tell his conversion story to any who wanted to hear it. He gave those uninterested in the audience a few minutes to escape before launching into it, but if anyone left, it was only a handful of people.

He started by sincerely requesting that no one record what he was about to say because it was personal, religious matter and could easily be taken out of context and either used against him or against the LDS Church. That was understandable at the time, but I really wish I could have recorded what he said.

What he said was so inspirational to me and I don't really see myself as someone who goes around getting inspired by things all the time. I left Kingsbury Hall motivated to make a few changes in my life; to be a better person. When that feeling began to lose its edge, I got a bit upset that I didn't have a recording I could go back to.

If you have the opportunity to see Glenn at any of his Christmas shows this year, go! I think he's going to be filming a show this year to release it on DVD and while that won't quite be the same, it'll probably be something to get and share with your family and friends.