The Bells are Ringing

It’s that time of year. It began with the faint ding of my cell phone indicating a text message had arrived. “Waaaayyyy too early for kettles,” wrote my sister from a suburban Buffalo store on the first day of November. She had heard a bell ringing as she walked towards the entrance and she knew it was “that time of year.”

In the 1942 film “For Me and My Gal,” a great question is raised: “Do you hear the bells go ding dong, do you know why they’re ringing?” Gene Kelly answers his own query in the first line of the familiar refrain. “The bells are ringing for me and my gal.” They were wedding bells!   

Unlike Kelly’s answer, the constant ringing we will begin to hear on our weekly trek to the supermarket doesn’t come from wedding bells, nor does their echo signify the end of war as church bells did at the conclusion of the Civil War. No, these ordinary and sometimes annoying bells clang throughout our land to signify that the war isn’t over and an Army continues to do battle in that war.

The Salvation Army’s care for the poor is not a new concept for people of faith. Historically, the Hebrew people declared a Year of Jubilee every fifty years as slaves and prisoners were freed and debts forgiven. In the last century, Catholic social teaching introduced the ‘preferential option for the poor,’ explaining that God gives preference to the poor and powerless, and so should God’s people. And in our century, new approaches to address poverty continue to spring up in faith communities around the world.

Government has also tried to stem the tide of poverty. Early approaches included auctioning off the poor, the development of Poorhouses, and the twentieth century answers, the advent of social security and welfare payments. Even with these adjustments, the poor remained with us, so President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in 1965, to be followed by the welfare reform of the 90s.

Yet despite all these well-meaning interventions, still the bells must ring. Some see it as a quaint custom, like the child’s rhyme. “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat.” Others pass by unaware, engrossed in conversation or checking cell phones for urgent messages. Some respond to the bell with irritation, tired of hearing it, while others hear the bell and remember that lives can be transformed as a community pools together the spare change in its pockets.

This Christmas, local Salvation Army units are kicking off their bell-ringing campaigns with events designed to create excitement in the community, celebrating the hundreds of volunteers and staff who keep the bells ringing between now and December 24^th. The festive Jingle All the Way 5K is this morning, giving the Ashland bells a running start at 8:30 a.m. For those of us who would jiggle rather than jingle if we attempted a 5K run, there’s a pancake breakfast after the race, followed by the annual Red Kettle Bazaar from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., a great way to get a jump start on Christmas shopping.

In Richland County, the bells will ring at a traditional breakfast gathering at the Mid-Ohio Conference Center on November 19. And for the music lovers among us, the Salvation Army in Wooster will welcome its Ring a Bell, Change a Life campaign with the holiday music of Ashland’s own Kroc Center Big Band on Monday at 6:30 p.m. I’m looking forward to my first taste of Christmas cookies during that event.

I do hope the Kroc Center Big Band plays “My Grown-up Christmas List” on Monday night, because its writer, Linda Thompson-Jenner, communicates better than I can. “As children we believed the grandest sight to see was something lovely wrapped beneath our tree.” Now, as adults, we recognize the rest of the picture, for “heaven only knows that packages and bows can never heal a hurting human soul.” I wish the kettle bells didn’t have to ring this year. But until the war on poverty is truly won, the Salvation Army bells will keep ringing their message of hope.