Epic Christmas Caroling

It’s a rare treat when anyone shows up in the neighborhood Christmas caroling anymore. A choir came to our shut-in neighbor’s house last year and the whole street turned out to listen. Now, Improv Everywhere knows that nothing succeeds like excess, so when they went Christmas caroling, they took not only a four-part chorale, but a full choir, an orchestra, and a chorus line of Santas and snowmen! 

What if no one was home? What if the family doesn’t celebrate Christmas? There were just too many variables to be able to go up to a random house, especially when you’re going to all the trouble to transport a 39-person cast to New Jersey.

So we came up with a solution: we rented a house and then invited families into the home under the guise of getting a family photo taken. We reached out to our NYC-area email list looking for families in the Bergen County, NJ area who were up for a surprise. In all we surprised five families over the course of the evening. The moms acted as our accomplice– they were the only ones in the family who knew that something was going to happen, but they didn’t know what. They kept the secret from their husband and kids. Once the families arrived for the photo, a producer told them to wait their turn in the living room and to please answer the door if the doorbell rings as we were expecting more families soon.

That explains why no one was upset about the artificial snow tossed all over the yard. When I first watched the video, I was imagining myself in the Mom’s spot, thinking “I don’t have enough treats to offer all these people!” Sorry, I’m all out of figgy pudding. Read more about the Christmas mission and see behind-the-scenes pictures at Improv Everywhere. (via Tastefully Offensive)