They should have been singing “O Come All Ye Faithful ” or “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” The van that brought them should have been parked nearby. And carolers in Henrietta should have been dressed in holiday sweaters and Santa hats. Despite the fact that his old orange Camaro was parked directly below the window he stood beside, the old factory did not appear remotely inhabited. Henrietta was the holiday performance one was volunteered to participate by virtue of breathing.Ĭarolers fit perfectly into that general world-view.īut it didn’t seem to Gansey that the carolers should have been here, standing outside in the overgrown parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing, and it didn’t seem like they should have looked the way that they did. One didn’t have to sign up for any holiday performances. Church groups offered egg nog at every turn.

“Jingle Bells” wavered over loudspeakers by the drug store.

For a month, the downtown was made festive with shaggy old tinsel stars wired onto street signs. It was one of those small Virginia towns that expressed holiday spirit by delivering food to the elderly and decorating fire trucks for the under-aged and filling every public venue with seasonal programming.

It was not that Henrietta wasn’t the sort of place to produce carolers on Christmas Eve. There shouldn’t have been carolers, but there were. Like the 300 Fox Way piece, it takes place the December before The Raven Boys begins. This year, I decided I’d do one for Gansey. In previous years, Scholastic asked me to do a short 300 Fox Way holiday piece.

Dreamer trilogy maggie stiefvater