December 11, 2022-- a Caroling Story

 

Christmas Caroling

By:  Carrie Keiser

 

The only time I remember going caroling as a child was one snowy December evening when we loaded into the car and forged out into the wintery weather to regale the fine people of western Montana with our vocal prowess.  I can’t recall how old I was but I know Megan was quite young maybe three, so possibly I was 10. I’m not 100% sure why we decided to go caroling, we are not much of singers, but we were spreading our wings and getting into the Christmas spirit and sharing the message of hope by way of carols to the unsuspecting residents of the Frenchtown area of western Montana. 

I do not remember how many people we subjected to our singing, I do remember that we came upon a car that was off the side of the slippery road and nearly in the Frenchtown Pond.  Dad and Brandon (possible Martin) got out to help the unfortunate driver, an older lady who it turns out had been drinking at a party and should not have been driving.  Dad offered her a ride home and so we had to squeeze together and make room her.  Dad said she had been cussing quite profusely up to approaching the car and seeing it was full of children and then everything became “a heck of a nuisance”. I remember that she was wearing a long fur coat and that she didn’t smell very good (that would have been the alcohol on her). It is a moment in time that is locked in my mind… some of the details at least).

Edit note: Mom said it was dad who wanted to go caroling that evening.

By: Colleen Holmquist

There is an old, two-story, white farmhouse down the road from us. It’s the Boyer place. Old Joe Boyer died in 2002 at the age of 90. His family was one of the early French families that settled in the Frenchtown valley in the 1870s. The Boyer ranch was one of the big ones in the area. When Old Joe died, it was split up between the four kids. Joey, the only son, still runs cattle on his part. (He also donated several acres as conservation easement—but that’s another story.) The sisters subdivided theirs and our home sits on a little over an acre of Lisa’s inheritance.

I don’t remember how we came to know Mrs. Boyer since she was pretty much housebound at the time. Maybe it was from Halloween Trick-or-Treating. I think one of the neighbors told our kids that she always gave big candy bars…

Anyway, Anders took a liking to Mrs. Boyer and we started visiting her regularly. One time her care giver brought her to the Boyer Lane (that’s our cul-de-sac) Fourth of July celebration.

She was always excited to see us—especially the boys. She liked all of the neighborhood boys. She would send the kids to get (store bought) treats out of the oven where she stored them—and I would make herbal tea. Then we would sit and visit with her. Her eyesight was failing but her memory was acute. She regaled us with stories from her youth in Butte and her time on the farm in Arlee where she met Joe. She told about Joe’s family and how she felt like a bit of an outsider.

She talked about what it was like when her kids went to school in Frenchtown.

She delighted to talk about the trips she and Joe took all over the country during his tenure on the Missoula Electric Coop board of trustees.

She told about working for her brother at his grocery store in Missoula and how she enjoyed her job as ward secretary at St. Patrick hospital. Often she shared her favorite sayings, “Love many, trust few and always paddle your own canoe.” And, “that’s the way it goes: first your money and then your clothes.”

One year, when Anders was still in Primary, he suggested we go caroling to Mrs. Boyer. He had a favorite Christmas song and he wanted to sing it. We knocked; she wheeled up to the screen door. I’m not sure what her thoughts were when we burst out in refrains of “Praise to the Man”, but she clapped and invited us in as usual. (I think it was 2005, the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s birth, when the primary was learning about him and practiced that hymn).

Mrs. Boyer died January 30, 2014. She was 92 years old. The old farmhouse is still there. It has new windows and tenants. I often think about Mrs. Boyer and the time we spent in her home. We have other Mrs. Boyer stories but at Christmastime, caroling and singing “Praise to the Man” is the one that comes to mind and puts a smile on my face and calls hers from my memory.

Christmas Caroling

Flynn Family Story Slingers

11 December 2022

On the Air Caroling

by Cary Holmquist

Here’s a different angle on Christmas caroling and my experience with the long-honored Yuletide tradition.  

When I was in high school, it had already been a many-years tradition for school choirs in the area to bus-in to the studios of KRTV in Great Falls to record a few Christmas carols which would then be presented by the television station on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  This was done with the sponsorship of businesses in the communities from which the schools came—their business got some kind of promotional mention in the process when the program aired. 

Some of the air-time was donated by the television station also.  It used up the majority annual hours that the Federal Communications Commission required about public-service programming necessary back in those days.  This public-service time was part of the licensing agreements the stations were required to provide as a form of pay-back for using the regulated public broadcast airwaves on their exclusive frequencies.  

Since programming was expensive to produce, these Christmas-time presentations were an inexpensive way for the station to fulfill their requirements—they paid nothing for the talent and expended little for the production other than studio space and recording costs.  And it was, at that time anyway, a very un-controversial presentation of a public service that people throughout the broadcast-area community would have self-interest in.  

So, I recall going for at least two years from Fairfield High School to KRTV studios in Great Falls to perform Christmas carols that we had practiced twice or three times a week over a couple months.  Since our air-time was limited, we selected from our repertoire that we would also present at a school-sponsored Christmas concert, which is when school choirs get to shine their talent.  These concerts are usually attended only by families of the performers and the television program reached a potentially much larger audience.  So the television programs were a perfect fit, a win-win for everybody.  

I do not recall the particular carols we sang.  Except that our selections never included, “Carol of the Bells,” which I never got to sing in high school.  For whatever reason, the choir teacher never scheduled us for practicing that carol for concerts or the television during the years I was part of the choir.  I always wanted to sing it and never got the chance and still do not know how to sing it, 40-some years later, which is why I remember that it was not part of our television program. 

The television studio borrowed risers so the forty or so of us could fit onto a stage concert style.   However, the risers the station came up with were never large enough to accommodate groups our size and so we had to improvise with ways to fit us all in.  So it was never comfortable as some of us were precariously balanced and squeezed in. 

Plus, we had all dressed up, as required, in  wintertime woolen clothing, sweaters and boots we wore because it was, of course, cold and snowy on the day we were scheduled to record.  So, under the studio’s bright television lights, we were HOT and it got sweaty.  So, it was not just the snow that was glistening….

And, the final product did not always go very well.  The studio was not set up for group-sized sound nor even a piano, which was always our accompaniment.  So by the time it aired, the sound was blaring and clunky at the same time.  Year after year, we never learned to somehow boil it all down to a much smaller group which the microphones and recording equipment then would have been much better suited to pick up the true sound well.

Now, why, you might ask, is all of this a story about Christmas caroling?  

Caroling follows the long-practiced tradition of groups going from house-to-house to sing-out the joy of the birth of Our Savior and the promise that He would bring salvation to all His mortal brothers and sisters.  How can a high school choir performance on local television be considered Christmas caroling?

Well, I figure that the television broadcast is almost exclusively seen in homes—that’s where nearly all the televisions—especially in the 1960s and 1970s—were located.  And so the performances were broadcast directly to people’s homes throughout the community.  

Most of the time, the people in Fairfield, for example, were interested only in seeing and hearing their local Fairfield school group sing, so they would tune in specifically to the time slot that was published in advance by the station for their particular performance.  All the other school’s presentations were just background filler.  So, it was pretty much the same as one choir traveling to sing in the homes of all the people in their community—which is…Caroling.