If this doesn’t feel like the most wonderful time of the year, you are not alone.
From office parties to family gatherings to church services, the COVID-19 pandemic has made traditional, social and religious gatherings more difficult and unsafe this month.
But a Bartholomew County minister believes if we can’t physically be with friends and family on Christmas, we can symbolically come together — if only for a few minutes.
Pastor Ed Cottrell of the Hope United Methodist Church is calling on all houses of Christian worship in Bartholomew County — and beyond — to start ringing their church bells at the exact same time.
Cottrell has been asking a number of churches to start ringing their bells at exactly 7:59 a.m. Christmas morning, and keep them ringing for no longer than two minutes, he said.
Historically, bells are sounded every Christmas to announce the arrival of the season to proclaim the birth of Christ. In Victorian times, it was fashionable to use small hand bells to play the tune of the carol.
The importance of bells on Christmas can be found in traditional holiday songs ranging from “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day” to “Carol of the Bells.”
But on Friday, several churches won’t have their traditional Christmas morning services, due to limitations placed on social gatherings such as church services.
“We’re looking at trying to bring everybody together, while as the same time observe social distancing,” the pastor said. “Hopefully, if we get enough people looking at this, the idea will go viral and stretch completely across the land.”
Those who have some type of bell or bells at home are asked to dress warmly and come outside their homes at 7:58 a.m., and ring them along with the church bells.
The minister said he wants to limit the bell ringing to no more than two minutes, due to the anticipated cold temperatures Friday morning.
As Americans begin to see an end to the pandemic and hope for better times ahead, Cottrell said it seems appropriate that this effort originate in a town called Hope.
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If you are trying to think of Christmas songs mentioning bells, and "Jingle Bells" comes to mind – sorry. It doesn’t qualify.
Originally titled as "One Horse Open Sleigh", the song was first published in Sept., 1857 as a Thanksgiving song and not a Christmas one. But it soon became associated with Christmas because of the ‘snowy’ lyrics. That led many choirs to start singing it at Christmas in the 1860s and 1870s.
First recorded in 1889, only the first verse (and chorus) are usually now sung. But many artists have sung the complete lyrics about the sleigh traveling too fast before "we got into a drifted bank … and then we got upsot."
Upsot? You can credit lyricist/composer James Lord Pierpont (1822-1893) for that lyrical stretch.
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