As commuters emerged from the Dupont Circle Metro station, a trio of carolers dressed in Victorian garb greeted them with jingle bells and holiday hymns.

In front of the adjacent Krispy Kreme and alongside passersby’s puffy coats, the carolers’ capes, top hats and bonnets made them seem out of place on 19th Street NW — almost like they had materialized from the pages of a Charles Dickens’ novel. Washingtonians and tourists alike stopped in their tracks and broke out into wide grins at the sight of these Victorian-era singers and the sound of their perfect three-part harmonies.

The singers belong to Olde Towne Carolers — one of the largest caroling companies in the country with offshoots in East Coast and Midwest cities, like Chicago, Illinois; Baltimore, Maryland; and D.C. Their performance at the station Saturday was the third in a tour around the Golden Triangle neighborhood, sponsored by the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District in collaboration with Heurich House Museum — which honors the legacy of the German-American brewer and real estate investor Christian Heurich — according to an employee at the museum.  

Jennifer Graf-Domijan, the founder and CEO of Olde Towne Carolers, said she founded Olde Towne Carolers in 2005 in the Philadelphia area in order to create more regular gigs for herself, as a classical singer, and her friends who are also professional singers. She said at the time, she found few other caroling companies while searching on the internet, making this endeavor “uncharted territory.”

“We started small, just a few of my singer friends that I just recruited who were interested in doing some gigs and just had a couple handful of gigs that first year,” Graf-Domijan said. “And then it just grew.”

Now, Graf-Domijan said her company has more than 200 gigs across 11 states every holiday season, which is roughly split between private events, like corporate parties, and public performances — like their residency at the Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia.

Graf-Domijan said the company’s approximate 160 carolers all either hold a degree in music or possess the equivalent in years of performing experience and rehearse the carols independently. She said Olde Towne Carolers boast about 90 songs in their repertoire, from hymns, like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” to 20th century classics, like “Frosty the Snowman,” but “Jingle Bells” is the one that always garners the most enthusiasm from crowds.

“People scream, they clap, they holler,” Graf-Domijan said. “I mean, there’s this Jingle Bells phenomenon. I can’t explain it.”

As for Olde Towne Carolers’ Victorian garb, Graf-Domijan said she works with independent seamstresses, including her own mom, who sew the dresses, vests and capes for all of their carolers to don. She said the Olde Towne aesthetic pays homage to the Victorian tradition and helps transport audiences from the “stressful” times of the modern holiday season to the simpler Christmases of their childhoods.

“Christmas was awesome and fun and magic, and you couldn’t wait to wake up on Christmas Day with your presents, and the music would be playing, and everything was just perfect,” Graf-Domijan said. “And there’s that person still inside of everybody. Every adult running around with stress still has that little kid inside them.”

As a frigid wind whistled through the streets of Foggy Bottom on Saturday afternoon, I ventured through the cold to Dupont Circle’s Heurich House Museum. A trio of Olde Towne Carolers were set to kick off their series of performances throughout the Golden Triangle neighborhood on the Heurich House’s steps as people lined up to enter the museum’s annual Christmas Markt.

Wrapped in their quintessential capes, top hats and bonnets, the carolers looked out to the buzzing line of families, couples and elderly folk over their bounded songbooks. From “Joy to the World” to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” the trio sang through the quintessential hymns of the Christmas season acapella, with the passing traffic on New Hampshire Avenue as their backing track. 

Some attendees in the line appeared disengaged with the carolers’ performance, opting to chat with their friends and family as they waited to enter the market. But other attendees and outside onlookers stood transfixed by the display, holding up their phones to capture the harmonies on video.

After the Olde Towne Carolers’ rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” I decided to venture into the Christmas Markt to secure a hot beverage to warm my ice cold hands. 

During my beverage side quest, the carolers departed before I had a chance to ask them what the next stop on their neighborhood tour was. I asked a volunteer at the Christmas Markt if she knew where they had gone, and she told me they were off to carol outside the Farragut North and Dupont Circle Metro Stations. 

To my dismay, the Olde Towne Carolers were nowhere in sight when I arrived at Farragut North. I looked high and low, around the Metro station and across Farragut Square, to no avail. Confusion and loss washed over me — just like when a boy in my third grade class spilled the beans to me that Santa Claus was not real. 

But I was not ready to call it quits. Tired of dealing with the cold in my thin jacket, I took the Red Line one stop North to Dupont Circle. There, tucked away in the dingy alleyway beside the South entrance to the Metro station, I spotted three figures in their top hats and silks.

The Olde Towne Carolers informed me that they had not ventured to Farragut North but rather the Mayflower Hotel — the famed Downtown hotel that served as the site for presidential inaugural balls from Calvin Coolidge through Ronald Reagan. 

The crowd around them ebbed and flowed, as some spectators stuck around for a few moments while others settled beside me on the low brick wall next to the station’s entrance. As the Metro’s escalator creaked in the background, the carolers jumped into a rendition of “Jingle Bells.” Like Graf-Domijan foretold in her interview, “Jingle Bells” did in fact bring the house down.

An older woman wrapped in a bright purple coat clapped along to the classic tune, while a young woman emerged from the Metro station with a rolling suitcase in hand and yelled out, “What a thing to come up the escalator to!”

The carolers’ joyous rendition of “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” transported me back to the climactic scene of my favorite holiday movie, “Elf,” where a crowd outside of Central Park sings “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” to power Santa’s sleigh to fly. 

As the onlookers dispersed and the carolers’ set at Dupont Circle came to a close, the Olde Towne Carolers returned to the Heurich House Museum’s steps for their fourth and final performance. 

With a cotton candy-striped sunset above them, the carolers sang out to their heart’s content one last time, ending with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to bid the District farewell and a Happy New Year.

After their set, I walked with caroler Rob Tucker to chat at the Tatte Bakery & Cafe West End location to digest the performance over a slice of orange upside down cake. 

Tucker, who has been a part of the Olde Towne Carolers for the past three years and is a public school drama teacher in Maryland by day, said the tradition of caroling transcends any religious denomination by providing collective experiences for people to gather in song.

“There’s almost always a look of recognition, sometimes a giant smile, that you’ve made someone’s day and they’re participating in that shared cultural experience,” Tucker said.