I answered it, assuming it was my downstairs neighbor come to borrow the next book in the Robert Jordan series. Instead, it was four clean cut young men, standing in a row.
"Mormons!" I immediately thought to myself. However, these boys were sans name tags and their usual little black book.
"Burglers!" was my next thought, but I quickly dismissed it. Burglers do not usually ring the doorbell and wear dorky matching windbreakers.
Seeing my obvious confusion, they explained. We are carolers and have come to sing for you.
Carolers! Caroling and carol singing is an important Christmas tradition in this country, centuries old.
My neighbors had told me that they usually didn't have carolers in our apartment building as the front door is usually locked. These ones must have slipped in somehow.
I went and found Bee and David so they could enjoy the music. Max stood completely still, very unlike his usual boisterous self. (He was so confused about the "singing people", you could positively see the wheels turning in his Labrador brain, struggling to understand the why in this new strange example of human behavior.)
The young men sang three songs, each beautiful and very well harmonized. Their voices echoed in the stairwell, lending an ethereal air to the performance.
In return, we gave them a package of homemade gingerbread men, and a small sum of money, as is the tradition here.
It will be a Merry Christmas indeed.
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