When I was a child growing up in Maine, our church was diagonally across from our house, sitting on a hilltop.  Every Sunday morning, the church’s bell would begin to peal calling us to Sunday School – and then to the morning service.  It wasn’t a refined bell – absolutely nothing you would hear in a cathedral in Paris or London or even Washington D.C.  I imagine it was a big old heavy iron bell – having a really heavy sound.  It was all that I knew at that time, and I waited every Sunday morning for it to eclipse all the other sounds going on in our little town of only a thousand people.  I loved the bell!

There is a wonderful children’s movie called “Beethoven Lives Upstairs”.  I think I have seen it at least fifty times, having shown it to all my students while teaching music in the public-school sector.  I absolutely love this short film.  For aesthetic reasons, I’m sure, the film was shot in Prague, but Beethoven was born in Germany, and lived in thirty-six different houses or apartments while composing his incomparable music in Vienna.  No matter where you are in Europe, you can always hear bells ringing at certain times every day – on feast days – for weddings – for church – and other special occasions.  In the film I have mentioned, for sure you hear the bells.  As they are ringing, Christoph’s mother comments:  “I love the bells”.  And every time I have seen the film, I mouth the words right along with her.

Even here in Eastern Europe in Brasov, the city where I live while in Romania, I hear the bells.  The church closest to me in Noua (nearly a kilometer away) rings their bells on the hour.  In the afternoon, they ring for ‘prayer time’ – and of course for weddings, etc.  If I’m in my car and I hear bells, I roll my windows down so that I can hear them better.  Did I mention?  I love the bells!

But I think my favorite bells are the ones that ring in the birth of the Savior at Christmas time.  The Christmas carol that we are familiar with today began as a poem called ‘Christmas Bells’ written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1863 on Christmas Day in response to the near fatal wound of his son Charles Appleton Wadsworth at the Mine Run campaign in Virginia during the Civil War.  It was set to music in 1872 by the English organist, John Baptiste Calkin.  The poem/hymn ultimately has seven verses.  The first verse, alone, stirs my heart like none other and is my prayer for Christmas, 2022 – ‘Peace on earth, good-will to men!’  Think along with me, if you are blessed enough to hear church bells ringing, of the announcement of the birth of our Savior – Jesus!  And to that I add, ‘even so, come Lord Jesus’ – again . . . !