It’s the most wonderful(?) time of the year

The holiday season snuck up on me like a bad case of acid reflux.  That’s right folks, haul out the holly and all that good shit, because the holidays are here.  I spent this past Saturday morning singing Christmas carols.  No, not for fun - please, I’m way too jaded for that.  I had my first rehearsal for caroling season. 

For the last decade or so I’ve been donning Victorian tails and top hat and spreading holiday cheer in malls and bank lobbies across the tri-state area.  Glamorous, no?  It all started way back in the late 90s when I got hired to be a promotional singer for A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden.  The cast had like, 20 shows a day so Actors’ Equity didn’t allow them to do any of the regular promotional stuff that a normal Production Contract requires of a Broadway cast.  Instead, the producers hired a quartet of singers (including little old moi) that did all the promotional appearances for the show, pretending to be actual cast members.  Well, officially, we didn’t pretend to be anything, we were just told not to refute the fact if anyone assumed we were.  Thus, all the confused voicemails on my service from friends and colleagues after my Today Show performance chastising me for not telling them I had booked such a great gig.  As a historical footnote for all my teen and twenty-something readers, back in the stone ages we didn’t have cell phones, we had voicemail services that we checked 50 times a day from - gasp - pay phones!  Anyway, all I remember is that we had to be at the studio holy hell early, John Denver performed, I met Prince (he wasn’t yet “the-artist-formerly-known-as”) in the green room and we froze our asses off outside the studio waiting for Al Roker to introduce us -- oh, and we sang "Carol of the Bells"!  Yes, random, I know.

We actually booked some pretty sweet gigs through Christmas Carol - lots of big parties and openings - including Marilyn Albright’s Christmas party at her New York apartment (her last Christmas in NYC before being named Secretary of State).  But eventually Christmas Carol tanked and I started caroling for my friend, Donald’s, company.  Though the gigs haven’t been as high profile as Christmas Carol, it’s definitely been an experience dealing with crazy shoppers, PC police screaming “equal time for Hanukkah” and some extremely uncomfortable private parties where we were viewed as live ornaments.  Some caroling highlights from the last decade:

• Singing at a model home in New Jersey with a quartet consisting of a Ravenel (Show Boat Nat’l Tour), a Madame Thenardier (Les Mis Nat’l Tour & Bway) and a Madame de la Grande Bouche (Beauty and the Beast, Bway) and laughing about what a stepping stone Broadway is for your career.
• Walking across the backstage of Radio City Music Hall during a performance of the Christmas Spectacular and getting to watch that huge hydraulic stage lift up while the Rockettes were tapping away on top of it (we were performing in the lower lobby for a pre-show reception). 
• Dealing with drunken partiers/hecklers in the Natural History Museum at Bloomberg’s big Holiday party where he rents out a wing of the museum.
• Taking requests from tired Brooks Brothers employees at their empty Fifth Avenue store late on Christmas Eve.
• Sitting at the bar and getting free holiday drinks at the Firebird Café on restaurant row after a long New Year’s Eve gig in their dining room.
• Riding the Sorrento Cheese float as a “Sorrento Cheese Caroler” in the Little Italy Christmas Parade and not knowing we’d have to be singing without a microphone to a screaming crowd from on top of a flatbed truck. 
• Asking for a Diet Coke and then getting chastised at a private party given by an executive of Pepsi (I swear I didn’t know).
• The numerous times mid-song when someone will walk right up to us and ask a question (usually something stupid, like “Are you guys carolers?”) thinking we’ll just stop mid-note to answer them. 
• The annual Christmas party at a Connecticut family’s home where we end the evening lighting real candles on their tree and singing "Silent Night" - all three verses and the German - and taking breaks in the kitchen with their Polish cook who is constantly bad-mouthing the “wasteful habits” of  “rich people.”  Sadly, the parents got divorced a couple of years ago and the wife couldn’t afford to keep hiring us.
• Strolling with the free booze cart around a big NYC advertising company’s Christmas party trying not to feel humiliated as young hipsters laughed while we serenaded them with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Here's a holiday toast to more ridiculous Caroling adventures in 2010!

Me, Trish and Caroling buddies in our festive debut at some mall in upstate New York - so glamorous!