Here We Come A Wassailing

Ever hear of that song? I've *heard* of the title, but never knew what it actually meant (it means caroling). And I'd heard of carolers going door-to-door but never really understood where it stemmed from.

Well, this year my son's school, which is affiliated with the local Orthodox church, decided to try caroling as a fundraiser, just as in the Orthodox tradition. And I learned something new.

The way it works is simple: during the 12 days of Christmas (from Christmas Day on Dec 25 to Epiphany on Jan 6), carolers go door-to-door, sing for the host home, get invited in for drinks and a snack, chit chat a bit, and then receive their donation before departing. In our case, since the fundraiser is specifically for the school, we organize it a bit more-- targeting priority homes (mostly those of school parents and church board members), giving a more detailed spiel explaining what the caroling/fundraising is for, and scheduling appearances. So far, the fundraising has been a smashing success-- and we still have a week to go!

Last night provided another opportunity to carol at a Christmas party hosted by one of the senior staff of the Orthodox church. Since we could always use more singers, I invited friends from our church (a non-denominational Protestant church) to come sing. After all, we'd been practicing Christmas carols for our own church's choir for the past few months, and figured it would be fun to have a few more opportunities to actually perform what we've learned.

We had a lot of fun and got to meet lots of new people. Small world, too, as one of the Orthodox church members recognized one of my friends (who is the choir director at *our* church) as her kids' music teacher at a neighboring private school! And one of the school parents runs the business that supplies our company (among others) with our coffee and water dispensing machines. This city of 90K is not that big, after all.

Anyway... if you're reading this and are in/around Santa Barbara and like to sing, feel free to come join us in caroling :-) It'll be lots of fun, and you don't even have to be a good singer (case in point: Allan sings with us!)

One last funny to close out the post: remember my post about Allan being called "Ms. Kwee"? Well, when Allan and I attended our first caroling session on Saturday, the headmaster of the school inadvertently introduced him as "Todd". Which is understandable, as he sees Todd far more than he sees Allan. But, as an old high school classmate pointed out, that combination of misnomers just goes to prove that Allan will someday need lots of help remembering who he is ;-) No wonder he puts on his nametag upside down every Sunday :-)