Fan Resident Goes Door-to-Door Caroling Inside Thin-Walled Apartment Complex

RICHMOND, Va. — In an effort to get himself and all of his neighbors into the holiday spirit, Eddie Philips, a Fan district resident, spent the past few nights traveling door-to-door singing popular Christmas carols throughout his apartment complex with paper thin walls.

“‘Tis the season to be jolly, and I want to be the one spreading the holiday cheer to my fellow neighbors,” Philips declared in a recent Facebook post. “I ‘decked the halls’ of the first floor yesterday and plan to take on the second floor tonight.”

The Patterson Avenue building, which was built with walls so thin that residents have filed noise complaints for so much as a neighbor’s excessive sneezing, had never been subject to door-to-door Christmas caroling since it began leasing in 2006.

Despite his good intentions, Philips’s neighbors did not take kindly to his antics. “He knocked on my door at 10 p.m. and just started screaming the lyrics to ‘Jingle Bells’ until I finally shut the door on him,” Stacey Atkinson, a resident of the building, commented. “And then he did the same thing to the guy next to me, then the person next to him, and because the walls are basically cardboard I could hear everything from start to finish. Luckily for us the next guy didn’t give him more than ten seconds of his time.”

Even though the responses were moderately discouraging, Philips remained confident that his actions might eventually get everyone into the Christmas spirit. “I’ve been working on a rendition of ‘Little Drummer Boy’ that will really get my neighbors fired up. I’m even borrowing some drums from my friend Steve to take with me, and I’ll be covered in garlands and tinsel. That’ll surely hit the spot.”