Christmas caroling is less common than it once was: one study found that fewer than half of Americans who remembered caroling as children said that they planned to do it again themselves.
But Catholics in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, are keeping the tradition alive — and offering their prayers as well as song.
St. Francis of Assisi Parish hosted its fourth annual Christmas caroling event December 13.
Carolers, which include both children and adults, go house-to-house in small groups.
After they sing, carolers ask their neighbors if they have any prayer intentions to share. Then they text the intentions directly to another group of parishioners back at the church, who prays for them in real time before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration.
“I think it’s a very generous idea because we’re not really asking anything of the people when we knock on the door,” Aaron Lindemann, who participated twice with his children, told The Pillar.
“It’s more or less, ‘We’re here caroling. We’re at the local parish. Can we sing for you?’ And then when we’re done, we tell them, ‘We have people praying back at the church. Can we pray for you?’”
Elizabeth Gruenke, St. Francis’s youth ministry coordinator and one of the organizers of the event, told The Pillar that neighbors have been very open to sharing their intentions over the years. One man she met this year told her group that he lost his wife two years ago and is feeling lonely this holiday season. Gruenke took note of his address and plans to send him a Christmas card.
“We would receive a lot of intentions that were sort of generic, like peace in the world or for my family this time of year, but then also a lot of just very serious intentions, very heavy intentions,” said Gruenke. “A lot of intentions for family members who were sick or terminally ill or had recently received a significant diagnosis.”
When the caroling groups return to the church, they join the others in intercession for a few minutes before concluding with some social time. Gruenke said it is powerful to come back and see all the intentions solicited by all the different groups, which are displayed on a screen.
“I think it was really helpful for all the groups to see all the collective prayer intentions and not only their own,” Gruenke said. “And to see — this is from the 45 minutes that we went caroling. These were the fruits of that, and all the people that we are now able to pray for.”
Song and prayer
The annual caroling event began as part of the parish’s youth faith formation program. It was Advent of 2020, and Covid cases were on the rise.
“We thought it would be a way to do something that would be safe,” Gruenke explained. “People could wear masks if they wanted. It would be outdoors. It wouldn’t be a large gathering, as maybe we had done in the past for a Christmas program.”
And as Gruenke and the other staff members involved considered the logistics, she said, they felt drawn to add intercessory prayer — in real time.
“To tell them, ‘We have people praying for you right this moment, and we’re going to share this intention right away,’ really brought a seriousness to it that we were backing up what we were saying,” said Gruenke. “And I think people then felt more comfortable sharing intentions that they maybe wouldn’t otherwise.”
Gruenke and the other organizers printed programs with song lyrics, a map, and the phone number of the parishioner who would receive and display the prayer intentions on a large screen back at the church.
Many of the participants, Gruenke included, had never gone caroling in a neighborhood before. And neither had their neighbors received many such visits.
“I remember one woman who was at the door… was just so excited that she actually received Christmas carolers,” said Gruenke. “It felt very, very joyful.”
This year, fewer carolers participated: about 20, compared to 60 or more in previous years. Gruenke noted that this was likely in part due to scheduling changes this year, as well as decoupling the event from the youth faith formation program (and, perhaps, the evening’s frigid temperatures). Last year they skipped the event entirely due to some scheduling conflicts.
“Even though I had hoped for more people to carol, to cover more streets and knock on more doors, it was a good reminder that so many of the encounters Jesus has with individuals in the Gospels are small in scale and incredibly personal,” Gruenke reflected.
One such encounter was especially meaningful: A woman who opened her door had just traveled home from her father-in-law’s funeral. The group’s rendition of “Away in a Manger” left her in tears, for it had been his favorite Christmas song.
Getting comfortable with outreach
Lindemann said that he was initially apprehensive about the event.
“For me, the idea of knocking on somebody’s door and singing is terrifying,” he admitted. “Not something that [makes me] think, ‘Oh, that sounds like fun.’”
He isn’t the only one. This year, Gruenke shared, the group of high school girls she led caroling were nervous at the onset.
“When we stopped at the first house, the girls were so shy and had trouble making it through the first carol as they began to giggle nervously,” she said.
But once it becomes clear that neighbors are glad to receive them, it’s much easier.
“The woman we were caroling for then joined in on the carol. Afterwards she shared that we made her day and asked if she could give us all hugs,” said Gruenke. “That immediately increased their confidence and their excitement to knock on more doors.”
Lindemann felt similarly. “When you hear a person or two say, ‘Here, could you please pray for this or this?’ — it very quickly opens your eyes to the fact that this might be a blessing for people,” he said, “and it’s encouraging to get over that fear.”
He also recommends going in larger groups if nerves are an issue. “The more, the merrier,” he said. “So go out in one big group, rather than not at all.”
Gruenke hopes the event will help participants be more confident sharing their faith “outside the walls” of the parish.
Lindemann agreed, saying, “It’s just a really beautiful evangelistic tool.”
This report is part of The Pillar's solutions-oriented series highlighting parishes across the U.S. You can read more from this series here.
