Trick or... wait, what?!
The doorbell rang, which was odd - we weren't expecting anyone, and mail and that type of thing shows up in the morning. We click on the speakerphone to see if it's someone outside. Nothing, so I open the door and look out. You can imagine my surprise when I saw the individuals in this photo:
My first reaction was along the lines of "sorry folks, but Halloween's been over for a while", so I called my wife to come have a look and see if she could figure out what the heck it was. She recognized the motley crew as a tradition they have in Italy too, and the leader of what Ilenia explained were the "three wise men, plus shepherd" caught on that I'm "not from around here" and explained in English that they're collecting money for some good cause. Apparently, you give them money and they sing, so we did, and they did - and weren't half bad, either. I took a quick snap of them with my phone camera, with Helen and Ilenia in the foreground.
Bizarre.
Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:34
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By EwS {{count}} days later:
We also have this weird ass-tradition in Spain, although they usually stand on a place (usually their school), they don't sing and they represent the whole nativity. The only cool thing about our version is that they usually have some kind of cool dawn and dusk lightning effects, this xmas carol meets the 3 wise men looks a bit more center-European to me.