I swear, if you don't get out of my driveway, I'm going to call the cops. Merry Christmas.

I've been listening to holiday pops on XM/Sirius radio on the way to and from work, and I usually enjoy the music very much. I do not like shrill little boy sopranos. Anthony Way, for example, makes me want to stick my fingers in my eyes and twirl them around. I also do not like to listen to Dame Joan Sutherland sing carols because her diction is so weird and phlegmy. It's not a carol, but if she sang it, it would sound like this:

Caddy me bok tew old Vuhjiddy

Deah's wheah deh coddod ahnd deh sweed bodadoes gr-rrrrr-ow!

Deah's wheah deh buhds waughble sweed in deh sprrr-rrringtahm . . . .

So I said to myself, "Oh, yeah? Think you can do better, P-doobie?" And I remembered the caroling parties we used to go to every Christmas eve.

Jim and Gracie, our neighbors for years and our friends since 1982, would host the caroling party. After several years of trial and error (amateurs, for example, can't sing "O Holy Night" without breaking down in so many ways--vocally, musically, spiritually), we finally whittled down our list of carols to "Joy to the World," "Jingle Bells," "Silent Night," and "O Come All Ye Faithful." They were in everybody's range. We knew the words.

It was traditional to start our caroling at the home of a family we knew was always out of town on Christmas Eve; singing to the empty porch was a warm-up to the debacles to come. No matter what we sang for folks, Gracie would jingle her jingle bells, so "Silent Night" always sounded like a reindeer convention. Uncle P would play his harmonica as an accompaniment. We'd be out for an hour or so--earnest, effortful, and always near the tune--and then we'd round up the people who took the wrong turn on Trinity Drive and were favoring the folks down on 43rd Street with "Jingle Bells" while the rest of the group was at the top of Sandia singing "Silent Night,"and adjourn to Jim and Gracie's for posole, hot cranberry punch, and other yummy holiday fare.

Several parties, however, remain etched in my memory. There was the time our hosts invited a couple of newbies, and we were warming up on "O Come All Ye Faithful." The wife said, "We should sing the first 'O come let us adore him' very quietly, then the next one a little louder, and then on the final one, we should sing out quite loudly." Everyone looked at her as if she were a bug in the wassail bowl.

"Um . . . you've never sung with us before, have you?"

"We don't worry about dynamics. We just want to get the words right."

"Some of us [meaningful look at me] aren't even singing the right song some of the time."

"Yeah, well, some of us [meaningful look at Eric] aren't even on the right street!"

There was the time the temperature was around zero with variable southwest winds at 15 to 20 mph, and we were all so happy because we thought we could stay inside and eat, drink, and be merry. But no. Jim herded us, crying and bleating, out into the arctic cold. We stayed out less than 30 minutes. Uncle P's frozen mustache whiskers occasionally snagged the harmonica, so our listeners heard, "Joy to the world! The Lord is come! Let--"

"OW! Son of a . . . ."

". . . King!"

And once we went caroling in a blizzard. We mushed up to the empty house, sang "Jingle Bells," then plowed over to a guy who shoveling his driveway in a futile effort against the rapidly accumulating snow. We surrounded him and sang, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas / Just like the ones I used to know." Even through the driving snow we could see that his hands were gripping the shovel very tightly, much as one might grip a weapon. We could take a hint. We finished one chorus and slogged back to Jim and Gracie's, where we took turns shoveling each other's cars out.

Warming up for the venture into the cold on Christmas Eve.