The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 4: For Whom the Christmas Bells Toll
Inside: Bells have long been a symbol of Christmas, but where did the tradition come from? Stick around to see for whom the Christmas bells toll.
The History of Bells
Bells have long been associated with churches, as a means to call people to gather, in good times and bad, in celebration and mourning. To ring out during weddings–or sound a warning. To announce the arrival of seasons, whether the new year or the birth of Christ.
In ancient times, people celebrated the coming winter by noisemaking to ward off evil spirits. Because bells were common, easily made, and people knew how to use them, they were often the noisemaker of choice. At some point, however, the tradition of using noisemakers such as bells was adopted by Christians and used to celebrate something joyous–Christmas. Some believe that it was Bishop Paulinus of Nola in Campania (431 A.D.) who began the practice of calling the faithful to worship by the tolling of large bells. Others credit St. Patrick with ringing bells to gather the people from the surrounding Irish villages so that he could teach them from the Bible. The bells, then, were associated with sharing biblical teaching, and so on days of religious significance, such as Easter, the bells would toll in remembrance.
While the ringing of church bells reminded people of significant events in the Christian calendar, such as Christmas, it was the Victorians who made bells fashionable. During the advent season, Victorians would go caroling, carrying handbells, which they would chime as they sang. Sometimes they simply walked and rang the bells without raising their voice in song, though most commonly they sang and rang the bells.
Many of us are familiar with the saying at Christmas: “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.” While you might think the line originated with the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, it was actually a saying among children over a hundred years ago.
Back then, kids naturally believed that making noise was part of the celebration of Christmas, and bells, being so inexpensive, were fun to bring along when caroling and wassailing. Nearly every family owned one, and most parents approved of this form of merrymaking during the Christmas season.
Christmas Bells in Popular Culture
Bells also play a part in popular Christmas folklore, with that jolly old elf driving his sleigh by reindeer sporting jingle bell harnesses. Those tinkling bells help him see the reindeer in the fog or snowy weather, don’t you know.
Finally, some of our most beloved Christmas songs were written about bells and the celebration of the most joyous of holidays. Of course there’s the popular “Jingle Bells,” and who can forget Bing and Ella singing a duet of “Silver Bells”? And how about “Christmas Bells are Ringing” or the more solemn “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” or the haunting and lovely “Carol of the Bells”?
So make some noise this Christmas. Really, it’s okay. Ring those Christmas bells. After all, we know for Whom the Christmas bell tolls, and He is definitely worth celebrating!
Have you ever gone caroling? Tell us about it in the comments.
Resources and related posts:
A Rural Girl’s Favorite Things Christmas Gift Guide 2019
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 1: Our Hillbilly Christmas Wreath 2019!
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 2: An Unforgettable Small Town
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 3: Cookies From Christmases Past
Posts from a year ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 4: In Pursuit of Perfect Pines
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 3: Rosemary Walnuts
From two years ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 4: A Truly Southern Christmas
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 3: Our Prim Christmas Tree Forest
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 3: Cookies From Christmases Past
Inside: Cookies top the list of Christmas baking, with most families having their favorites. Now indulge me, if you will, while I reminisce about my cookies from Christmases past.
Baking With Granny
I never met a Christmas cookie I didn’t like. It’s true. That said, early on I had the opportunity. . .
Granny and baking. For those of us in the family, I don’t need to say anything more. You know the different choices you have when broiling a steak? Well, Gran applied that to baking, and she leaned toward the “well done” side of things. But she had the patience to roll out sugar cookie dough, break out her festive cookie cutters, and let us grandkids have at it. She also made powdered sugar icing and colored it with food coloring. Aside: One year she was out of red, and I remember her turning to me and saying, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” She then proceeded to take a bowl of pickled beets from the refrigerator (she never had more than ten items in her fridge, nor did my other grandma, for some strange reason) and spoon out a little juice to color the icing. Believe it or not, you couldn’t taste the beets.
Year after year she’d hold this special day of cookie baking and decorating her trees–one an artificial green pine, the other one of those obnoxious silver aluminum jobs that every family owned in the late 60s and 70s. (Karl, do you remember that tree?) Mom and my aunts would drop off children, and while Granny wasn’t especially gifted with baking, she knew how to wrangle a group of kids and keep them on task until everything was done. All the while Bing crooned Christmas tunes in the background, compliments of her record player.
Good times, those were. . .
Cookie Creator?
In my early teen years I began clipping recipes and actually created my first recipe, which was a chocolate cookie, just in time for Christmas. I remember receiving rave reviews, but to be honest, I thought it was ho-hum. Don’t know if I still have a copy in my recipe box (remember those?) or not.
A few years later, I remember sampling from a container of assorted cookies some young newlyweds had made for my parents. (They didn’t have much money, so they baked cookies for gifts.) Within the confines of that decorative box sat the most delicious of Christmas cookies I’ve ever eaten. A wonderful round white ball that tasted of pecans with a dusting of powdered sugar, and there started a love affair that exists to this day. I didn’t know what they were called at the time, but I urged Mom to ask her young friend. “Russian Teacakes,” Rosalie told her. I must have asked for the recipe as well–no Internet to consult in those days–and from then on I have made them.
By the time I met my husband, with all of this baking experience (yeast breads included), I thought I was a pretty good cook.
And then I met my mother-in-law.
Making Cookies With Margaret
I wouldn’t say making cookies with my mother-in-law Margaret was fun. She was a perfectionist, and coming from Germany, our American ingredients just didn’t cut it. For one thing, they have this product over there she called vanilla sugar, and she had to go to a specialty store, with imported goods from her homeland, to buy it. She also didn’t like our butter. Margaret complained, saying that she and Oma (her mother) couldn’t understand why we Americans put salt in ours.
Still, with all the “bellyaching” as she called it, I sampled some really good cookies, one of which I’d place in my top five–Nutballs. (I’m attempting to remake the recipe so it will be Keto friendly. Tune in later this week.) Mike’s favorite they called Vanillas. You might know them as Vanilla Crescents. She also did some hazelnut cookies, but, sadly, her own recipes were lost when she passed away. Oh how I wish I had pressed her for them!
Cookies Through the Years
Since my early married days, I’ve baked cookies for Christmas for the family, for giving gifts, and for the people in my husband’s department. That last tradition started because Mike, when directing tv cameras during the Christmas service, would inevitably get so caught up in the Christmas production that he’d raise his voice and come across as irritated. So I would bake a large tin of Russian Teacakes for his volunteers as a way to soften the blow. (His people were great–they understood his, er, excitement.) The teacakes were much appreciated, despite the powdered sugar trail left behind by these wonderful cookies. At some point I started baking another recipe for Christmas production weekend that was a particular favorite of Mike’s. They’re called Chocolate-covered Cherry Cookies, but we loving referred to them as Atomic Cookies because the cherry gelatin called for in the recipe turns them a bright pinkish-red. In the last couple of years, though, I’ve filled in with break apart pre-made cookie dough. (Shh. . . Don’t tell.) I also use that for little gifts for delivery truck drivers who frequent the snowy roads in my neck of the woods around this time of year.
Nowadays I spend the week before Christmas doing most of my baking. This year I’m trying a couple of Keto cookie recipes for the Vanilla Crescents and the Russian Teacakes (aka Snowballs). Mom’s been baking as well and can’t wait to make her Gooey Butter Cake cookies, among other favorites. They’re pretty tasty, I must say.
Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got some dough to mix up. (Or cookies to break apart.) Either way, I know they’ll be good.
What’s not to like? They’re Christmas cookies, for goodness sake!
What’s your favorite Christmas cookie? Tell us about it in the comments.
Resources and related posts:
The Story of the Hillbilly Christmas Wreath
A Rural Girl’s Favorite Things Christmas Gift Guide 2019
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 1: Our Hillbilly Christmas Wreath 2019!
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 2: An Unforgettable Small Town
Posts from a year ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 3: Rosemary Walnuts
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 2: Silent Night’s Story
From two years ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 3: Our Prim Christmas Tree Forest
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 2: An Unforgettable Small Town
Inside: What does a foreign vacation, a tall preacher on an after-dinner horse ride, and a real estate agent with a knack for writing tunes have in common? A timeless carol about an unforgettable small town.
An Unforgettable Small Town
“O Little Town of Bethlehem”–the song brings back memories for me. Suddenly I’m nine years old, transported to the living room of my organ teacher, Marita Wehde, with a couple dozen other people, waiting for my turn to play music for the recital. I had three songs to play, one of which was “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I don’t remember the other selections, but I vaguely recall making a mistake on one of them. Yet my rendition of that famous little place was without error. Yes, the song brings back memories, and I’m not the only one thinking of an unforgettable small town. . .
On Horseback to Bethlehem
During a vacation to the Holy Land in 1865, Phillips Brooks, a nineteenth century preacher of great stature–six feet six–decided to take a horse ride from Jerusalem to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. In a letter to his father Christmas week, he wrote of his observations: “After an early dinner, [we] took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine. . . . Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been. . . . As we passed, the shepherds were still ‘keeping watch over their flocks or leading them home to fold.'” Mr. Brooks returned home the following fall, but the impressions of that night wouldn’t take musical form for another three years.
A Christmas Carol in the Making
Reverend Brooks, rector at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, needed a carol for the Sunday school Christmas program, and so he put pen to paper and wrote it himself. Memories of Bethlehem provided inspiration, and in one brief writing session, he penned the words. He approached his organist, Lewis Redner, a real estate agent in the area, and urged him to come up with a melody. But nothing came to him.
Redner recounted the story: “As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, ‘Redner, have you ground out that music yet to “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”?’ I replied, ‘No,’ but that he should have it by Sunday. On Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday-school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.”
Good Things Happen in Small Towns
You know what I love best about “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? In essence, it’s the story of an unpretentious farming town that became the birthplace of the Savior of the World. No big city or ritzy palace. Not even a nice hotel. Just an old barn with horses and cattle and sheep in an unforgettable small town.
But isn’t that just like God?
Do you have a favorite Christmas carol? Tell us about it in the comments.
Resources and related posts:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 1: Our Hillbilly Christmas Wreath 2019!
A Rural Girl’s Favorite Things Christmas Gift Guide 2019
Before Christmas Gets Crazy: Six Tips for Slowing Down and Enjoying the Season
Posts from a year ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 2: Silent Night’s Story
Make Our Healthy Butternut Squash, Apple, Cranberry Bake
From two years ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 2: Spiced Nuts
Winter Skies, Making and Baking, and Other News Fresh From the Farm
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 1: Our Hillbilly Christmas Wreath 2019!
Inside: What would Christmas be without our favorite farm decoration? See what we did with our Hillbilly Christmas Wreath 2019 style!
Today we’re kicking off our annual 12 Posts of Christmas–twelve days of Christmas fun in the form of recipes, writings, DIY crafting, and more! And speaking of DIY projects. . . The mother of all DIYs for us at A Rural Girl Writes is our Hillbilly Christmas Wreath 2019!
A little background on what possessed us to spray-paint a tractor tire green and slap on a large bow. . . It started as a simple idea. Back in 2016 I spotted a tractor tire festooned with a large red bow on Pinterest and told Mom, “We’ve got to do this.”
And we did–the following year–as a tribute to my dad. But there’s much more to the story, should you want to read it. Since then this little (big) tire of ours has gone through a couple of versions (2017 and 2018), been visited by someone famous, and brought a lot of joy to people. Why, just yesterday our UPS guy said he was going to post it on social media. I’ve also been getting a huge number of hits for the story, which includes some basic how-tos, should you want to do something crazy like spray-paint a tractor tire green and slap a festive bow on top of it.
What’s New With the Wreath This Year
I’ve been singing, Buffalo gals can you come out tonight. . . All in honor of our buffalo plaid bow this year. I’m liking it–and thinking I need to break out It’s a Wonderful Life to watch this year, among other Christmas favorites. But I digress. . .
If you’re wondering what it takes to maintain the tire, we buy a can of spray paint to touch up the faded spots, wiping off any dirt first. (We store the tire outside year round.) And, of course, string the lights back on and attach this year’s bow of choice. Fortunately we had a day with no wind and 50-ish degrees yesterday to do the bulk of the work. But the tail of the bow wasn’t long enough, so we had to run to town and buy some buffalo plaid poly mesh. (Thankfully Michaels had some!) Today, the weather wasn’t playing nice, but Mom attached the final part of the bow quickly, I snapped a few pics, and we called it a day. Nothing like doing things last minute, right?
What Do You Think?
Like the latest version of our Hillbilly Christmas Wreath? So many folks are searching out the directions for our favorite farm decoration, and I’m starting to see more tire wreaths posted on the web. Does anyone have any pics or comments to share? We’re trying to come up with an easier way to attach the bow, so if you have any suggestions, please send them on. You know, so we’re not standing out in the cold, teeth chattering to the tune of “Jingle Bells” as we’re wiring the bow in place.
Have a Merry Christmas season! And stay tuned through Christmas Day for the rest of our 12 Posts of Christmas!
Resources and Related Posts:
The Story of the Hillbilly Christmas Wreath
Before Christmas Gets Crazy: Six Tips for Slowing Down and Enjoying the Season
A Rural Girl’s Favorite Things Christmas Gift Guide 2019
Posts from a year ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 1: Return of the Hillbilly Christmas Wreath
Make Our Healthy Butternut Squash, Apple, Cranberry Bake
From two years ago:
The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 1: A Simple Song
Winter Skies, Making and Baking, and Other News Fresh From the Farm