Do you hear the bells at Christmas? Do their promises of hope, love, peace, and grace fill your soul with a yearning for better times? When you go to a tree lot or cut your own tree down in a forest, do you want a straight tree or a tree with slight imperfections? Four authors have taught me a lot about the bells and trees at Christmas: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Max Lucado. If we do not hear the bells or cannot accept trees with imperfections, we will not know the promises of the One who died on another tree, Jesus Christ.
The ringing of the bells was the beginning of joyous celebrations on Christmas day for Longfellow’s children. Francis ‘Fanny’ Appleton, Longfellow’s second wife, declared that her family would contemplate the promises of Christmas, their blessings, before there were wild celebrations, so that her children would understand what was really important on the day of Christ’s birth. Due to a tragic fire, ‘Fanny’ died. The joy disappeared from Longfellow’s heart, and he could not hear the bells for several years. The children begged him to let the bells ring in their home, but not even the wound from a sniper’s bullet that entered his son, Charlie’s body, in 1863, could open his heart to the four promises. It was not until he knelt down on his knees and asked God for forgiveness of his “dead heart” that the bells rang again in his home for Christmas day. The bells taught him that life must go on, even after such a tragic loss.
And English contemporary of Longfellow, Charles Dickens, always heard the bells rung from St. Martens Cathedral in London until he was forced to finish his book, “A Christmas Carol.” He developed his characters by allowing them to come alive in his study, one by one, with costumes, lines, and attitudes. Counting on the four promises, he believed that not all stories should have a happy ending, that we can learn the most when we allow ourselves to see both the good and the bad about humanity. The most troubling character in this treasured classic was whether Tiny Tim should die or live. If he died, the mostly serious story would cast a pall on the readers for another otherwise beautiful season, and no changes would occur in Scrooge. If Tiny Tim lived, humanity could learn the real importance of the four promises, to love one another as they wanted to be loved. Until Dickens faced the morality of his own relationship with his father who abandoned him and placed him in a work house, Charles realized the absurdity of his own faults and that he could not hear the bells of St. Martens until he accepted that Tiny Tim was really his own reality as a child.
Mark Twain, an American contemporary of both Longfellow and Dickens, loved the lyrics of “The Christmas Bells” written by Longfellow, but he could not find the last verse of the poem any where in our country. He was a world traveler and very popular on the speaking and poet’s tours held around the world. His adult daughter suffered from Grand Mal seizures and was left in the capable hands of a house keeper. On that last fateful Christmas day, Twain’s daughter presented her father with an original copy of Longfellow’s poem. Before he could feel the poem’s power, his daughter died, and Twain swore that he would never believe in God again. It was not until a neighborhood, ten year old girl sang the tune of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” to Twain that he realized the blessings of the four promises, our children.
These three 19th century contemporaries are similar to the 21st author and minister, Max Lucado. Since watching his last sermon on the computer, I have realized that he is a “bell ringer” for me. I have come to love Lucado’s sermons because he reminds me of my father’s sermons. My father was a master of taking Biblical verses and making them understandable for people from all walks of life, taking those words and making them current and believable. In describing how we go about selecting a Christmas tree, how we purchase it, how we prune it if it is not straight in the tree stand, and how we have a choice to be a Christian all year around, the bells of the country church I wrote about in my own book, “God Plants Seeds,” began tolling for me.
We are like Christmas trees. We are picked; we are purchased. We are pruned because we are filled with little faults. Christmas trees can either grow straight or lean towards the left or right. God picks us, purchases us, prunes us, and he has known us since before our births. Straight or leaning… we have a choice to be His children. A Christmas tree has no choice. Hopefully, they make our homes beautiful, sending their light into a world that cares little about the Christ child.
Jesus Christ keeps knocking at your door until you open it to Him. The peeling of the bells is what I hope you will hear this year on Christmas day. The four promises of hope, love, peace, and grace are given to us by the One who died on the greatest tree of all, Jesus Christ. Stand straight, stand leaning…God wants us all because the bells you hear are tolling for thee.
Anna Hartt
