Something nice that I definitely needed tonight.

For the past 15 years, my family (all 13 of us that are local) has gone Christmas caroling in my neighborhood, it’s tradition. We aren’t good at it, but we love doing it. It’s the one time of the year we can see some of our neighbors that we don’t see regularly, and in general, do something fun.

This year, for obvious reasons- Covid, (and it happens to be raining slightly), we didn’t go so we could try to be as safe as we can. – I did however go door to door (masked and gloved) to leave a note so no one would stay up waiting for us. We’ve shown up pretty late some years and some neighbors with kids have stayed up specifically to wait for us. I left a note purposely to let our neighbors know to not wait for us, and that we are thinking of them this year.

It was really a downer. For a lot of my family, this is the highlight of the season, and it just didn’t feel like Christmas without caroling. We had no idea of how our neighbors felt, but we did hope they missed us… which, in reality, didn’t make us feel any better.

And then, about an hour ago, the neighborhood flipped it on us.

For the past 15 years we went door to door caroling, and this year, the first time ever that we didn’t go, our neighbors came to us. Spread out across our yard, our neighbor came and sang Christmas carols to us. It was a last-minute, they grabbed umbrellas and printed out the lyrics of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, and gathered whoever they could. They sang to us this year. It was amazing. I'm still emotional.

I was crying, my dad was tearing up, and my mother is still crying. It brought the Christmas spirit we all needed.

Happy Holidays everyone, and here’s to a new, and hopefully better, year.