• Christmas should be a time of joy and goodwill towards your fellow man, and what better way is there to celebrate the holiday spirit than by serenading your fellow men and women with the beautiful sounds of your favorite Christmas Carols? Whether it's with your immediate family or a large group of friends and relatives, caroling can be a fantastic way to get yourself into the holiday mood (and show off your angelic singing voice as well). Can't carry a tune? Don't worry. With enough singing voices to back you up, your's will blend in with the rest and let you enjoy the experience without worrying about embarrassing yourself. Here's how to make sure that your caroling experience is as jolly as it can be:

• Ok, so you've decided to get your friends and family together for a rousing caroling session. But how do you go about starting to plan for the big night?

• • The first thing that you'll want to do is decide on a date for your caroling party. It's always a good idea to pick a date that will work for as many of your potential guests as possible, so you may want to start by seeing which days each person is free. While it's often preferable to go as close to the holidays as possible, there's no rule that says you can't start caroling on December 1st. If you still can't pick a date, try planning your party for December 20th, which is National Go Caroling Day.

• • Make a list of all of the people in your area that you would like to invite. Your list doesn't have to only include your family. You can invite your friends, neighbors, teachers, or even your local Boy Scout or Church group. And while you might be tempted to only invite people who are stellar singers, you may end up with a pretty short guest list. With enough guests, people who can't carry a tune will usually blend into the background.

• • Now that you have your guest list together, it's time to let everyone know about your caroling party. You don't need to go overboard with a fancy gift-wrapped and bejeweled invitation, but you should at least send out a simple letter with the date, time and address of the event.

• • The most important part of any caroling party is, of course, the music. While you may know the lyrics and melody to every Christmas Carol by heart, your guests may not. There are a couple of different ways that you can go about providing your guests with the help they need:
  1. Buy some Christmas carol songbooks for your guests. Songbooks usually have the words and sheet music to all of the most popular Christmas carols and are probably the easiest way to make sure that everyone knows how each song goes. They are relatively inexpensive and can be purchased either online or at your local music store. See our resources below for buying songbooks online.
  2. Make your own Christmas songbook. If you have a lot of people coming to your caroling party, it can quickly become expensive to buy a separate songbook for each one of them. Luckily, the lyrics and sheet music to most Christmas Carols are available online and can be downloaded and printed out as many times as necessary. See the section below on How to Make Your Own Caroling Songbook.

• • Before you rush merrily out into the night, it's always a good idea to plan out a route of where your caroling party will go. If you're going to be sticking around your neighborhood, decide on which streets you want to hit. Try to pick a route that will eventually lead you back to your house. That way you won't have to backtrack too much. Also, try to figure out how long it will take for you to complete your route. Too much time and energy spent out in the cold can dampen even the most dedicated carolers' spirits.
    • WARNING: If you're going to need to drive to your caroling destination (such as a nursing home, hospital or school), make sure that you organize enough drivers to carry all of your carolers to the destination, or at least directions for them to meet you there.

• • Since your home will most likely be the place where your caroling party starts off and ends, it is usually good to spend some time making it as festive and inviting as possible. Here are some suggestions for turning your home into a welcoming bastion of holiday cheer:
  1. Christmas Decorations are the most obvious way to add some seasonal flavor to your home. Items such as Christmas Wreathes, Candles, Christmas Lights, Flower displays and a sprig of Mistletoe or two can help transform your home into holiday central.
  2. Tasty Holiday Treats and Drinks are a sure-fire way to warm your guests holiday spirits. While you don't need to prepare an entire holiday feast, a simple display with a few different snacks and some hot drinks will give your guests the energy they need to sing their hearts out. For some food and drink ideas, check out some of Mahalo's Christmas themed pages:

• • No matter where you live (in the Northern Hemisphere at least), night time in December can be a cold and windy affair. While it may seem like common sense for your guests to bring their warmest clothes (just in case), you're likely to have one or two guest who show up unprepared. In order to make sure that everyone is happy and comfortable when they go caroling, you may want to find a few extras jackets, scarves, or pairs of gloves that your guests can borrow. Make sure to get them back at the end of the night though!

• OK. You're guests are properly fed, clothed and bubbling with Christmas spirit. The songbooks have been passed out, and the route has been decided on. Now it's time to get out there and start singing. But caroling is about more than just singing songs. It's also about interacting, entertaining, and sharing some holiday cheer with the rest of the world. Here are some tips for what to do while you're out caroling:

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1. As you approach each house, first take a second to judge whether or not anyone is home. If there aren't any lights on in the house, it's probably better to just skip the house and move on to one that seems more inviting.
2. When you reach a house that seems promising, have someone from your group go up and ring the doorbell. Give them a minute or two to respond before moving on.
3. When they answer the door, you can either greet them or go straight into singing your first song.
4. It's always a good idea to appoint someone to lead the caroling. Much like a conductor, the leader should let everyone know which song is going to be sung, what page in the book it's on, and most importantly, when to start singing.
5. It's usually customary to spend about 5 minutes or so at each house. This usually works out to about 2 songs each. If you are pressed for time, or have a lot of ground to cover, you may want to limit yourselves to 1 song for each house.
6. Feel free to invite anyone who is interested to join your caroling group.

• If you have a large number of people coming to your caroling party, it can be quite expensive to purchase a separate Christmas carol songbook for each of your guests. Apart from having your guests share songbooks, you can always spend an hour or so and make a batch of your own custom caroling songbooks. With the wealth of free Christmas sheet music available online, you should have no problem finding and downloading your favorite carols. All you need is a computer, a printer and an internet connection. Here's how:

1. Start by making a list of all of your favorite Christmas carols.
2. Browse through the Resources below and find a good copy of each of the carols you want to include.
3. When you find a good song page (such as this one for Silent Night), print out enough copies for each guest to get one. Set them aside in a separate pile.
4. Repeat this process for all of the songs that you want to include in your songbook.
5. Look through the lists of carols to see if there are any that you missed when you first made your list.
6. Using a Word Processing program, create a unique cover page for your songbook and print off as many copies as needed.
7. Take one copy of each song and stack them up together. Put your cover page on the top and staple or bind all of the pages together.
8. Take a pen and number each of the pages.
9. Repeat steps 7 - 8 for as many songbooks as you need. Make sure that you put the songs in the same order for each book.
10. Decorate your songbooks as much or as little as you like.