anton armstrong conducts the st. olaf choir. >> it's just not the music, but that we are lifting up a message, a message of hope, a message of faith, a message of understanding, and most of all a message of love. >> the popularity of the christmas festival has gone global. for decades, it has been broadcast on public radio and public television, and the armed forces radio and tv service as well. this centennial concert was also simulcast in movie-theaters across the country. >> it has been a model for spreading this message of faith at a time that people tend to forget why the season even exists. >> it all began 100 years ago, when f. melius christiansen, a lutheran immigrant from norway, established the st. olaf music department and student choir. >> what he found was that church music had fallen to a very lamentable state, that the popular music of the day seemed to be eradicating all the traditional music and that so many of the young immigrant norwegian students who he was teaching at st. olaf were forgetting the