I hope that we’re not visited by a choir of carolers this year. Not because I don’t like Christmas or Christmas music – I like both of those things.

I just don’t like when strangers from a choir group try to impress me with their singing. I always feel like they’re watching my facial expressions closely while they’re singing to see if I’m giving off non-verbal signals that indicate whether or not I’m truly impressed. Mainly, I think my hangup with this situation is that I never know where to look when they’re singing. If I stare at them with direct eye contact the whole time, I feel like that’s weird because do I lock eyes with just one of them the whole time? Share an equal amount of eye to eye contact or continuously move my gaze back and forth over the group like I’m scanning them? If I look at the ground or away from them it feels disrespectful. And what do I do with my mouth? Should I just grin like an idiot? Do I sing along? Should I remain stoic? It’s really way too much pressure for me.

Maybe I’ll search for YouTube videos to learn to make myself temporarily pass out as a defense mechanism to avoid the whole thing because surely they’d stop singing if I crumpled to the deck before they get through the first line of Carol of the Bells?

Anyhoo, if you’re in a choir and you stop by my house while out caroling or you’re with your choir buddies at the mall and you see me at the food court and think that I might like to watch you perform the new song that you and the choir wrote to see if I like it or not, please keep in mind that I would not like to see that. It’s just painfully uncomfortable for me.