The editor of the Boone News-Republican, our local newspaper, wrote an article about our church youth group’s annual caroling party. According to the reporter, the practice of caroling is dwindling away.
If that is true, I mourn the loss because I know how much it meant to Dad. Once he was confined to a wheelchair, he didn’t get out much in winter. While Mom was teaching and we kids were at school, he sat alone in our house, a prisoner to the snow and cold that made navigating his wheelchair outdoors almost impossible. When we came home each afternoon, Dad’s smile couldn’t quite cover the loneliness that made his shoulders slump and his forehead wrinkle.
But in the weeks leading up to Christmas, when we heard car doors slam in the driveway, the thump of boots on the sidewalk, and the doorbell ring, he was a different man. My cold-hating father threw open the front door, parked his wheelchair smack dab in the vortex of the frigid air, and pleasure warmed his body as he listened to the carolers.
That joy is what our youth pastor, Joel Waltz, tried to communicate to his charges before they started caroling last Wednesday night. “It may not seem like a big deal to you, it may seem like fun, but to someone at that doorstep or to someone at the hospital…or homes…it means a big deal to them,” he said. (To read the whole article and hear the kids sing some carols, go to www.newsrepublican.com.)
I think of Dad, shivering in the cold, grinning from ear to ear, waving to friends and strangers alike, thanking them for coming, wishing them a Merry Christmas as the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, 4-Hers, high school activity clubs, youth groups, and Sunday school classes went back to their cars. If our youth group kids could have seen the sadness leave his shoulders, could have watched the wrinkles leave his forehead as the last strains of We Wish You a Merry Christmas died away, they would know Joel’s words are true. Caroling on someone’s doorstep or in a hospital is a big deal.
May it never be a lost art.
