Christmas carolers adapt to coronavirus dangers to bring joy to holidays

’Tis the season to be careful: Christmas carolers are adapting with plexiglass and extreme distance this season, as health experts warn about the dangers that singing poses during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the St. Louis region, carolers have raised millions of dollars for children for more than a century at Christmastime, and this year will be no different — except singers will perform “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful” via video, not on doorsteps.

“I think people are so glad that we didn’t throw in the towel and say, ’Another year,’” said Lynn O’Brien, interim director of the St. Louis Christmas Carol Association.

This year her group is raising money by producing digital “caroling telegrams,” or short videos. “It’s just this way to ripple out joy,” Ms. O’Brien said.

Efforts to “ripple out joy” have been deeply appreciated among communities, as the nation weathers a pandemic that has infected more than 16.8 million Americans and killed 305,000 this year, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undercut seasonal traditions throughout 2020, especially live singing, with the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention calling for masks when people sing to prevent the spread of the virus and to “[a]void singing or shouting, especially indoors.”

Fortunately, caroling is already weatherized.

Before Thanksgiving in Framingham, Massachusetts, a group of friends who call themselves the COVID Carolers started rehearsing in a parking lot at night. For weeks now, they have gone door-to-door to collect $50 donations for a local food pantry, singing behind masks at 6 feet apart in backyards and driveways.

“It’s like a logistics operation. We can do four to five to six gigs a night, where we do eight to 10 songs, and add a little banter about our message,” said organizer John Blaine, adding that the group uses orange traffic cones to mark spacing between households.

Mr. Blaine says they were driven by a desire to fight the blues during a socially distanced winter season in which separation and loneliness have largely replaced holiday parties and gatherings.

“We’re this traveling troupe now, and it’s so much fun to do,” he said.

And they’ve blessed the local food pantry.

“Our numbers have [risen] tenfold since COVID,” said David Blais, co-founder of Daniel’s Table, which anticipates serving 1,000 families a month by February. “It’s [the COVID Carolers’ fundraising] just been awesome.”

Other Yuletide singers are adapting in creative ways, including a parking lot drive-in and carols and sheets of music handed out at car windows at the Falmouth Congregational Church in Maine to masked children singing through a window at a retirement home in Norman, Oklahoma.

A study from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Maryland has found that the transmission of aerosol droplets created during singing can be reduced by up to 90% by wearing surgical-style masks.

The ongoing study also disputes the notion that singing is uniquely dangerous, compared to other entertainments such as band or theater.

Brandon Dean, choir conductor at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, said his singers wore masks specially designed for singing and took breaks halfway through hourslong rehearsals this fall to allow air circulation. The choir’s pre-recorded Christmas worship experience will be broadcast online Sunday.

“Yes, there’s aerosolization in the act of singing. You’re producing air,” said Mr. Dean, who pointed out that the study documented zero cases of COVID-19 spread among collegiate choirs. “But it’s being spread in the same way like talking or yelling or any other physical activity.”

Like the collegiate choir, many carolers are longing for days when they can return to singing without face coverings. But the new caroling program may “become a new branch” of the annual program, Ms. O’Brien said.

In St. Louis, the top videos are St. Louis Cardinals’ mascot Fredbird dancing to “Santa Claus Comes Tonight” and a sock puppet-version of “Deck the Halls.” Ms. O’Brien says the videos are being sent to hospital rooms, to New York City, even to the Philippines. She hopes they’ll be a staple of her group’s repertoire in the future, though they’ll be back next year.

“We’ve got a lot of eager carolers who will want to be out there,” Ms. O’Brien said.