Sharing Christ’s Love to our Neighbors

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Our yearly tradition of caroling is something we all look forward to — and one that we hear our neighbors do too! Comments like, “It wouldn’t be Christmas without this!” — touch us. It shows what love and joy does. It shows how in the hustle and bustle of everything Christmas, it is good to slow down and remember how important people are.

Mom figured out how many batches we’d need to make of our traditional Poppy Seed Loaves (you can find the recipe at the link), shopped for the ingredients, etc. Mary designed the card, and then we had a work party. We enjoyed having some of our friends visiting, and they added to our caroling party + voices!

I’d love to hear some of y’alls caroling experiences!

Love,
Sarah

The weather was very mild. We started out in the lower 50’s!
Calia had bells on her boots, so she added quite the effect!
Caroling to GiGi!
This is our group before the younger families split and put their littles down. We missed most of Nathan and Melanie’s family as they had colds.
This is our smaller group who went to a number more places that we drove to. I asked one of the ladies to take our picture (and she’s a blog reader :)).

Then, two nights later, we decided to go back to some
of our friends who hadn’t been home Sunday evening.
They were so grateful we did!

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you
good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”
Luke 2:10

23 thoughts on “Sharing Christ’s Love to our Neighbors”

  1. I love reading about your caroling! Every year a group from church (last year there were 65 and this year 33 people) get together and go caroling to all the widows from church. This year we added a few who had just started coming, and a widower. It’s something everyone looks forward to. Even the kids start asking when we are going caroling because they love it!

    1. Awww. So glad. Even when you moved from our neighborhood, you still were on our driving caroling route. You do miss our “cute” factor with the little ones, though, since they only make the walking part and then head home for bed.

  3. Love this!! I always enjoy seeing your caroling post each year! Our bible study group goes caroling at an assisted living home. We take little felt bags containing a small pack of tissue, a lib balm, and a candy cane. Some of the moms also get the children together ahead of time to put together some kind of candy craft or ornament. This year the craft was a snowman Hershey bar. After singing, we let the littlest ones hand out the gifts. It was so precious to hear one of our little boys telling each resident, “Hewr’s youwr Howrshey bawr!” The residents LOVE the attention and the children’s faces!! It’s one of the highlights of our Christmas season!!

  4. We did our first evening of caroling last night. It was just our 6 kids, my husband and me. My daughter played her violin too. We handed out cinnamon rolls to our neighbors. What a fun night! Thank you for the encouragement to do this.

    A few questions on how you do your caroling:
    1. How many songs do you sing per house? (We just snag one verse of one song along with a violin solo.) It seemed too long to sing more with our small group.
    2. Do you sing the same song/songs at each house?
    3. Do you knock, they answer and then just start singing? Or?
    4. Do you spend time talking with them? Or just a brief hello and move on?

    I would love to hear the how tos of your caroling. Thanks!

    1. Sounds like a very successful first night of caroling for you. So glad you enjoyed it. Like you, we have settled on one verse of one song, unless we start to sing and the person at the door is working to get others to the door. If they show up when we are almost done, we will move into a second verse. We sing the one verse and then move right into “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Same song at every house. “Joy to The World” has been our “go-to” song for several years. This year we tried “Angels We Have Heard On High.” Yes, we knock and start singing when they answer. Most of the time we sing and move on. Sometimes, someone will stay back for a minute or two and visit at the house, soon catching up with the group since we are in the neighborhood. We don’t have time to stop and talk at each house.

  5. A group of about 40 from our church went caroling to some shut-ins this past Tuesday. It’s great to remember people who can’t always do as many Christmas activities as we can and to share God’s love with them! 🙂

    1. Going to the shut-ins for caroling is wonderful. They really seem to enjoy it. Our caroling history goes back to caroling to shut ins. When we first moved here, my mom had a meal-on-wheels route, and at Christmas, she gathered us together to deliver cookies to her meals-on-wheels people and carol to them. Very sweet memories for all of us tied up in those caroling years.

  6. I’m sure your caroling is such a sweet blessing to your neighbors! 🙂 I hope you and all the Maxwells have a wonderful Christmas as we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

  7. I love how you carol to your neighbors every year! What a nice thing to do for them! One Christmas we went caroling at a rest home with our homeschool group.The elderly enjoyed that!

    1. What a great surprise for you. It is lovely to be caroled too! Christopher’s family came to our house caroling the other night. The children quote part of the Christmas story from Luke, and then they sing a carol, and give us a plate of homemade cookies. They do that with some of our neighbors, too, separately from our big family caroling.

  9. My oldest son had wanted to go caroling his whole life. (He’s now 14.) This year he FINALLY got to go! He and one of his brothers went with a local church. Normally it’s snowing here this time of year, but this year they went in the pouring down rain. It didn’t bother them at all! And, as an added bonus, I was a little sad that I couldn’t go along; and they ended up coming HERE to carol! I was so happy! 🙂 It was such a great experience for us all.

    Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas!

  10. Y’all’s caroling experience looked like so much fun! For the past several years, our family has organized a caroling group at our house with many families from our church. Everyone always looks forward to it so much, as it’s a highlight of Christmas. Everyone comes and parks their cars at our home and then we carol to our neighbors. The neighbors have come to really enjoy it and we are always humbled to witness how the Lord works through our meager efforts to share His love and joy with others. Afterwards, everyone comes back to the house and we enjoy each other’s fellowship over some good food (hot chocolate, coffee, chex mix, pigs in a blanket, etc.) Thank you all for encouraging our family and many others to seek the Lord with all our hearts and to grow in the light that He gives us. We so enjoy y’all’s blog….and my younger sisters are devouring Sarah’s new book!!!
    I hope y’all had a wonderful Merry Christmas!

    1. Your caroling party sounds great, and it is very encouraging when neighbors enjoy it and come to anticipate it. We have a mini caroling food party at our house after caroling for those who still live here, but our main caroling food part of the party happens another night. That’s because the young families don’t want their children up too late and the caroling lasts until their bedtime. So Christopher and Anna Marie host the caroling food get together at another convenient time.

  11. We tried caroling for the first time this year. We went to two peoples houses not in our neighborhood just friends of ours and brought them cookies. We enjoyed it so much we decided to do it again next year!

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