When I was still living at home, every Christmas, Mom would take us caroling to the neighbor’s houses. We had a pretty good knowledge of carols thanks to Tasha Tudor’s Carol book. We’d to the requisite songs and some lesser known ones.
Having a good knowledge of carols is a fine thing, unless you are on a nine-hour drive from Knoxville to Pennsylvania. On one of those drives to my grandmother’s house, Mom had us singing carols most of the way. Nine hours of Silent Night (German and English verses), Adeste Fidelis (Latin and English verses), Bring a Torch (French and English verses), and all of the other traditional songs. By the time we got there, Tracie and I were very punchy so we started singing Christmas carols off-key. The more off-key the better. Controlled dissonance and everything. We’d get as bad as we could and then burst out laughing.
My youngest sister Stephanie and I started a new tradition a few years ago. We also had carol fatigue so we started singing all carols either off-key (until yelled at) or as meows. In other words, every word is replaced by cat sounds. Jingle Bells becomes meow-meow-meow, meow-meow-meow… You get the idea. Spice up the choruses with periodic sound of upchucking a hairball and you have feline perfection.
I introduced Kat to this last night while we were out shopping. We couldn’t stop laughing as every song that came on the radio got the feline caroling treatment.
The crazy things you do when you’re punchy.
Funny how some of them stay as Christmas traditions.
