The CD player in my car is kaput. I
have, therefore, been forced to listen to Christmas music on the radio. Most of it has been okay, but even I get
tired of Josh Groban’s O Holy Night
on a daily basis. There was one song that made me feel weird. It was one of the versions of Carol of the Bells. It started off pretty enough, but at the end, the voices sounded like they were
screaming. RIIIIIIIIIING
RIIIIIIIING RIIIIIING!!!!!! Egad.
It reminded me of Edgar Allen
Poe. He wrote this amazing poem called The Bells. It is verse filled with
onomatopoeia. You remember what that is
– right? It’s when the pronunciation of
a word reveals what the word means. Like
buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Well, The Bells
begins rather lightly and ends up on a somber note. Poe put a lot more into the somber than the
light, but then, he was a depressed guy hooked on heroin, so what do you
expect.
I decided to revisit Poe’s poem in
light of the whole creepy Carol of the
Bells thing to see if I could redeem something for Christmas Day. I still
like creepy Edgar despite all of his gloominess. And, he did inspire an Easter sermon for me
once. We might as well give Christmas
its due.
The first bells are Christmas bells
– silver bells – what a world of merriment their melody foretells! Poe says that these silver bells keep time
under a starry twinkling sky with some of the best lines of literature ever:
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Wedding bells come next. They are gold and foretell a world of
happiness. From them a gush of euphony voluminously wells dwelling on the
future and the rapture that impels.
And, that’s when the twist
comes. Poe spends the remaining
two-thirds of the poem describing alarm bells that shriek in the middle of the
night and moaning and groaning of the funeral bells. It’s an awful way to end – fearful and
without hope. I think that’s what made
me so uncomfortable about the rendition of the Carol of the Bells that’s been
on the radio.
Despite the lyrics declaring Jesus as Lord, it was if they didn’t really believe it. All that was left was alarm and a shrieking chorus.
I’m not naïve. The depiction of the Holy Family in our
Christmas crèche is far from factual.
And, it’s not going to take long for this baby to grow up and meet his
fate in Jerusalem. It’s just that right
now, Jesus is a baby. He is Mary’s
little one. Just like most mothers, she
looked at him with wonder. “Here you
are, my beloved. You are my hope for a
better world.”
My take-away from this reflection
is that the world can do it’s best to fill me with fear, to keep me in a state
of alarm. Death can threaten to upset me
to a point of despair. However, I
believe in hope. I believe that the Love
of God was poured into flesh so that I need not be overwhelmed with what the
world might throw at me. The brazen
alarum bells may scream out their affright, but the songs of angels remind me
that a child is born to bring peace on earth.
And the melancholy menace of the iron funeral bells will be erased when
that child becomes a man.
Therefore, in the midst of the most
turbulent of weeks, with terror and despair knocking on the door of my heart, I
will tell them I am busy. They cannot
keep me from looking at a Baby in wonder, knowing that he is the hope for all
the world.
Amen.
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