What happened a few years ago, when my brothers and I decided to carol the neighbors?
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat…won’t you please put a penny in the old man’s hat?
If you haven’t got a penny, a haypenny will do,
If you haven’t got a haypenny, then GOD BLESS YOU!
Why the English carol in the middle of a food blog? I was just thinking about the time my brothers and I decided to carol our suburban neighborhood, after a long family Christmas dinner. We were all drunk, of course (yes, we were all of legal drinking age…I think…).
The reaction we got from our neighbors was pretty unexpected. Doors didn’t open. Curtains got drawn. In retrospect, I’m surprised that someone didn’t sic their dog on us….remember, these were people we actually knew …and we weren’t all that inebriated…
When I was a kid, growing up in small town America, we would always go caroling with our church’s youth group or Girl Scout Troop – to a much warmer reception, I might add. Later, with my own kids, we would always be part of the "minstrel troop" of hardy souls who caroled shut-ins and nursing homes in our area – again, to opened doors, hot chocolate and warm cookies….
So what happened in those intervening years? Have we become so frightened of opening our door after dark that we can’t even accept a well-meaning carol anymore?
As for my brother and me…well. We never did go caroling again…too bad.
