Church of the Brethren carolers visit other members to spread a little Christmas cheer

For Naomi Turner, Sunday was not a silent night. Not that she minded.

Turner stood transfixed at the open door of her Lynchburg apartment as 27 Christmas carolers fanned out up and down the stairs in all directions, a varied tapestry of different ages and assorted headgear (some wore antlers, a couple sported snowflakes, Jack Karpenske showed up with a Santa Claus hat).

Uniform, they weren’t. Enthusiastic, they were.

“So, are we getting better?” one of the carolers asked Turner.

“It’s always the same,” she said with a smile, “and I always enjoy it.”

I asked Karpenske, the genial pastor of the Church of the Brethren, if his group ever changed its repertoire.

“To what?” he asked. “Christmas carols are Christmas carols.”

Well, yes. And this time of year, they’re almost part of the air we breathe. I had to have a tooth pulled recently — a particularly stubborn tooth — and as my dentist alternately yanked and sawed on it, I heard the maniacally cheerful, piped-in voice of Brenda Lee chirping “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

Actually, I think it’s the relatively modern Christmas carols that are most likely to get under my skin after I hear them for two months. Like “Frosty the Snowman,” and “Feliz Navidad.” And if the Little Drummer Boy had actually showed up at the manger, Joseph and Mary would probably have told him: “Will you please stop that racket? You’re going to wake the baby!”

Fortunately, none of those were part of the Church of the Brethren routine, although the group did slip “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” into the ensemble. At Naomi Turner’s apartment, the first of five stops, they started with “Come All Ye Faithful,” segued smoothly into “Jingle Bells,” then “Sleigh Bells,” then “Silent Night.”

“They’ve been doing this ever since the church started (in 1964),” Karpenske said. “Some of the church members we sing for are what you might call shut-ins, but not all. It’s anyone who may have had to miss our Christmas service, which happened to be today.”

The great thing about singing Christmas carols is the low expectations. This was not the Morman Tabernacle Choir. They hadn’t practiced — at least not much — and they didn’t arrange themselves in a way to balance their voices. One church member who was identified as the best singer in the group stood at the bottom of a stairwell at Naomi Turner’s apartment, effectively drowned out by the semi-angelic voices above. They still sounded, well, like Christmas.

Jack and Peggy Karpenske, the de facto choir leaders, never know what to expect when they meet at the Atlanta Avenue church to marshal their forces each year.

“It varies a lot,” said Jack Karpenske, the pastor for 10 Christmases. “Some years, it’s been pretty light. One time, we had so many that we split up into two groups.”

“Every year, we seem to have more,” said church member Jason Stevens. “I think it’s because we keep having kids.”

And kids are easier to bribe. That’s why Peggy Karpenske brought cookies.

“We’re also going to have chili when we come back,” her husband said.

After gathering at the church, the carolers piled into five cars to make their appointed rounds. The intended targets had been notified — and sometimes, the audience expands.

“We’ve had neighbors come over to listen,” Karpenske said, “and when we stop at Guggenheimer Nursing Home, we always draw a crowd. They won’t let us into acute care, though.”

Too much fun for them, perhaps.