Sabbath Devotional :: Bells of December
I love the sequence of holidays in December — we celebrate Christmas, and then one week later, the arrival of the New Year. Our Christmas celebrations allow us to ponder the miraculous birth of our Savior and His miraculous life and mission that followed. This opportunity to ponder on Jesus Christ and His life lead straight into New Year’s, when we consider the coming year and typically resolve to improve and do better in our lives. The Savior’s example is our best guide as to how we ought to live and that we can ponder the greater meaning of these holidays in tandem shines a new light on the opportunity of our New Year celebration, another sort of ritualized recognition of the Atonement at work in our lives.
Christmas and New Year’s also mark the two occasions in which we can sing from our hymnal about bells in the words of two classic English-language poets — Longfellow’s bells of Christmas Day, and Tennyson’s bells ringing in the New Year. Below is the full text of the Tennyson, and I especially love the stanzas which speak of peace and how we might engender that feeling among our fellow humans.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson “In Memoriam [Ring out, wild bells]”
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Elizabeth VanDerwerken is a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
