Christmas Bells

  Every Christmas season, I like to blog around a central theme, if I can come up with an idea. This year, I’m going to share the stories behind some of the symbols associated with Christmas.

 As I was decorating the house last weekend, I came across the one item which to me symbolized the entire Christmas season as I was growing up. Every year ever since I could remember, this bell has hung in the doorway leading into the bedrooms of my parents’ house. When we emptied Mom’s apartment last February, and I found it in its original box, I knew it was the only one of Mom’s Christmas decorations that I wanted to claim.

 Even though Jingle Bells may be the first song we think of when we think of bells at Christmas time, the poem by Henry Longfellow actually says it all. He wrote it on Christmas day in 1863 as his son was recovering from nearly fatal wounds he had received while fighting in the Civil War. (I did not know that until just now looking it up on-line.)

   I HEARD the bells on Christmas Day

    Their old, familiar carols play,

        And wild and sweet

        The words repeat

    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    And thought how, as the day had come,

    The belfries of all Christendom

        Had rolled along

        The unbroken song

    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    Till ringing, singing on its way,

    The world revolved from night to day,

        A voice, a chime,

        A chant sublime

    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    Then from each black, accursed mouth

    The cannon thundered in the South,

        And with the sound

        The carols drowned

    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    It was as if an earthquake rent

    The hearth-stones of a continent,

        And made forlorn

        The households born

    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    And in despair I bowed my head;

    "There is no peace on earth," I said;

        "For hate is strong,

        And mocks the song

    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

    Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

    "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

        The Wrong shall fail,

        The Right prevail,

    With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Isn’t this the song we should carry in our heads year-round in these troubled times?