By: Caitlin Fletcher

Don’t you just love it when you’re sitting at home bundled under a warm blanket and it’s snowing outside? You get to sit there watching White Christmas in your pajamas; that is until your doorbell rings.

You open the door and come face to face with twenty people singing Christmas songs. That’s right: carolers. Now not only are you cold after being exposed to the snowy weather, but you also get to enjoy the immense embarrassment of twenty random strangers seeing you in your pajamas. Don’t you just love carolers?

Christmas carolers somehow pick the most obnoxious songs to sing. They don’t sing “White Christmas” or “All I Want for Christmas Is You”. They sing songs like “Jingle Bells”, and while the song is pretty catchy, it gets annoying after carolers repeat every verse twenty times.

But out of all the songs carolers sing, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” is easily the worst. The way they seem to get closer and closer to you when they’re singing this song has me cringing and wanting to run inside to protect my precious personal space.

Even when the carolers leave after twenty minutes of singing on my doorstep, I am plagued by the sound of their voices. I can still hear them singing loudly and off key to the same songs they sang at my door as they harass my neighbors.

Sure carolers are usually kids and their parents. But I’m pretty sure that those teens out there whose parents or relatives drag them caroling, yes sadly I have been one of you, don’t want to be walking around in the cold singing. So why prolong their suffering by opening my door to them?

The little kids, however, are an entirely different story than those suffering teens. These cute, smiling kids actually enjoy caroling, yeah I’ve been in that position too. So, of course, I have to open the door for the cute little kids who only want to spread some holiday cheer, I mean I’m no Grinch.

But once I open the door for these cute little kids and their parents what am I supposed to do? I can’t just stand there and just stare at them! I, instead, am forced to fake a smile and look at the ground, nothing is worse than making awkward eye contact with those people. As I stare at the bricks on my front porch I remember I’m wearing my pajamas and I suddenly become self conscious of my reindeer pajama shorts. I can only hope my neighbors are not witnessing this.

So, my advice on how to deal with carolers? Turn up the movie you’re watching to drown out the sound of the singing, hunker down into your couch (that way the carolers can’t see you through your window) and, although I appreciate the holiday spirit that carolers bring, avoid opening the door for carolers as well as you can. Because once you open that door they will leave you standing in the cold at your front door, in your reindeer pajama shorts, staring at the ground with a fake smile plastered to your face for what feels like an hour.