I don’t love Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against it, but I don’t tend to get that warm and fuzzy feeling because it’s twenty degrees outside and I suddenly owe every person I know some proof that I care about them.

However, there is one thing that I always look forward to about the Christmas season: the Pop Group Tour.

The two pop groups at school, Spotlight and A Cappella, are comprised of choir students who audition earlier in the year, and every winter they take a day off of school to visit nursing homes and hospitals.

We have to practice the songs a lot in order to make sure that they’re polished, so by the time we have to perform them, we’re all pretty tired of hearing them. As soon as we started singing at the first nursing home, though, I knew it was all worth it.

Because the faces of the people watching us were rapt, some of the people singing along and one lady so overcome with emotion that she started crying. It’s an amazing feeling to know that we can have this much of an impact on someone’s day, even their week. The administrator at the nursing home told us that the residents there look forward to us coming every year.

After that, we visited a hospital for cancer patients. While it was sort of sad to see all the patients and know why they were there, I knew that we were really helping. One woman in a wheelchair who had lost all her hair was so moved by our voices that she stood up and started dancing along.

I find it incredible that we can help so much by doing something so easy. So maybe I don’t like Christmas, but I love the feeling I get from improving someone’s day, especially people who are less fortunate than I am.

And- I can’t believe I’m about to say this- that’s the true meaning of Christmas.