The Sunday Sermonette – Heard Any Bells Lately?
For years, Christmas Day meant piling into the car with Mom and Dad, heading west along roads both familiar and new. After Dad was called Home in 1997, Mom and I kept the tradition alive. One Christmas in the early 2010s, before time began to steal pieces of Mom’s memory away, we rode north on Hwy 49, then turned west onto the Saucier Lizana Road. The afternoon sunlight painted the world in delightful, dancing shadows, and the crisp breeze seemed to beckon us onward.
We rolled past Herring’s Short Stop Café, where the air was thick with the mouthwatering scent of fried oysters and hushpuppies. Herring’s Christmas House came into view—alive with tinkling music boxes, gleaming porcelain reindeer, and manger scenes that whispered the true meaning of Christmas. Amid all the displays, my favorite was always the towering, mechanical Elvis figurine, hips swinging as he crooned “Blue Christmas.”
As we ventured further west, we marveled at the pines, their branches swaying gracefully in the afternoon breeze. The woods stretched out before us, carpeted with golden leaves that glowed in the sunlight. When Strauss’s “Tales from the Vienna Woods” drifted through the car, Mom’s smile said it all. It felt like the perfect soundtrack for a perfect Christmas ride—or so we believed.
Lost in the peaceful rhythm of our drive, I was jolted by a flash of brake lights ahead. Then, a car packed with teenagers approached from the opposite direction, the driver signaling for me to lower my window. His warning was blunt: “Hey, mister! You’d best turn around. There’s fightin’ up ahead.” I thanked him as he sped away. The car in front of us began to reverse, and its driver, a concerned woman, paused to echo the same warning: “Sir, turn around. It’s not safe to go any further.” I nodded my thanks. Mom peered anxiously over the dashboard. “Andy? What’s going on? Do we need to go home?”
I inched the car forward to the top of the hill, heart pounding. In the hollow below, a tangle of young men, bare-chested and brandishing sticks and knives, was locked in a violent brawl. Blood stained them, and the road. I spun our car around as quickly as I could, heading back toward Hwy 49 in heavy silence. Strauss’ waltzes played on, but the magic had faded.
The winter sun dipped low, and finally Mom broke the silence with words that I’ve never forgotten: “Andy, how sad…fighting on Christmas Day…how sad.” Bittersweet sadness surrounded me. As Mom dozed beside me, the violent scene replayed in my mind. “It’s Christmas, for heaven’s sake!” I thought. “Can’t y’all stop fighting and live in peace, just for today?” My thoughts drifted to my ninth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Faye McCloud, who once read to my class Wadsworth’s “Christmas Bells,” a poem born from his own personal heartbreak and the Civil War.
“…And in despair, I bowed my head. ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said; for hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men!…Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.’ The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, goodwill to men.”
I then sent up a silent prayer for those young men. I prayed they would someday house their anger, mend their wounds—both physical and mental—and make peace with each other. Looking at my dear sleeping mother, I also remembered her reading the Christmas Story to Dad and me. It was then that I remembered these comforting passages from the Gospel of Luke:
“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
Ponder this and go forth.