Christmas Adventures in the Quarter

My friend Emily and I had quite an adventure last night. We thought we'd join this sweet and reverent time of caroling in Jackson Square - a 50 year tradition in New Orleans. It was......different than I thought it would be.

First of all parking in the Quarter is a nightmare. I refuse to pay $12 to park for a free event. So we drove up and down the streets looking for that rare but valuable free street spot. As we were briefly stopped craning our necks at one intersection to see if a space was available to us, the guy behind us started blaring his horn. One street down he managed to get around us as I was trying to see if I would fit into a space. At the next stop sign he got out of his car and came back to yell at us for stopping where there was no stop sign - yelled! "Merry Christmas to you too" I thought as I pulled out my cell phone, dialed 9-1-1 and told him that I was making the call if he did not get back into his car. After a few more stressful blocks of looking for a space, we finally found a great one and headed down the caroling.

Again, I was thinking of some of the great musicians in the city - how incredible the singing would be and how great everything would sound. When we were greeted at the gate by a man and woman dressed in Victorian attire, I was sure my suspicions were right on. As we rounded the corner to the stage we heard "and now our mayor will lead us in Jingle Bells". C Ray singing Jingle Bells?!? We had to push to the front to see this but as we darted under a palm tree it caught on fire (I'm not kidding and it wasn't us, we didn't have candles). People were frantically batting at the tree with their Santa hats to out out the fire so Emily and I pushed to the front to find that yes, C Ray was indeed leading us in Jingle Bells! From there the music went from bad to worse. It was all the city leaders who were our song masters and let's just say they weren't good and they seemed to have enjoyed the eggnog a little too much that evening. It was one of the most comical things I'd ever seen. It was also beautiful....all of Jackson Square in front of the cathedral covered by people singing, laughing and holding candles.

In a city where there is often lots of violence, anger, blame shifting and fear, it was fun to come together for an evening and celebrate. As we were singing "O Holy Night", I couldn't help but think of that baby born over 2000 years ago. Somehow being PC didn't matter last night - we sang of the hope of Christ. When I look at this city, I think that really is our only hope. I long for more times that our city could gather like this - to celebrate the true hope.....but maybe with different singers next time.