Caroling, Cocoa and Cookies

Growing up as a singer and a musician, I always had great dreams of my family caroling together at Christmastime. Our voices would blend in perfect harmony as we graced the neighbors with our angelic serenades. But reality is much different. Yes, there is some musical talent in our family, but there are also several members of our family that cannot carry a tune to save their lives, nor have any desire to. So this means in our 18 years of marriage, caroling hasn’t been a part of our Christmas traditions. I’d given up hope that we’d ever be like the Von Trapp family, and embraced our other interests during the season instead. Then the other day I was listening to a podcast, from The Mom Hour about Holiday Entertaining, and decided to steal their idea about Christmas caroling. Instead of relying solely on our family singing together, we invited several other families to join us. It was very casual. I grabbed some cookies I’d made, and threw them on to plates with some Christmas cards for our neighbors along with some for our fellow carolers.  We met our friends in the driveway and paraded house to house down the street. We sang about one song per house, to keep it short. The kids were as hyped up as they are on Halloween, running wildly down the street with excitement. But instead of being on the receiving end, it felt good to have them on the giving end for a change. It was perfect having all the additional voices, you hardly noticed the few that were out of tune because they were drowned out in the large group. Afterwards we headed back to my house for some hot cocoa. The whole activity only lasted about an hour, which was perfect for the kids' attention span. With all the other activities in December, it was great to keep it short and sweet. I’m excited we finally worked in this new family tradition, and found a way to also check off an activity on our service advent calendar to #LightTheWorld with kindness this Christmas season.