Christmas Greetings From Larry

(This is a repeat of a post from 2013.  Recently my bride and I purchased a new Ford Transit Connect Wagon.  When my bride came out on the morning of December 21, 2017 to drive into the law mines she found all the windows rolled down.  The car doors were still locked and nothing had been disturbed in the car.  The car automatically locks after the drivers door is closed, and it would have been impossible thereafter to lower the automatic windows.  Now many people might find this incident puzzling or even alarming.  However, we took this as yet another visit from our late son.  Larry during his life liked sneaking into our cars to retrieve  music cds.  We suspect this was his way of saying hello to us at our fifth Christmas without him.  No greater Christmas present could have been given us.  Death stands helpless before lasting human love and the hope beyond the grave that all Christians possess.  Special things can occur at Christmas and such an event has blessed my family.)

Something for the weekend.  One of my favorite Christmas carols has always been I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.   It is based on the poem Christmas Bells written  by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day 1863.  Still devastated by the death of his wife in a fire in 1861, he had been rocked by news that his son Charles, serving as a lieutenant in the Union army, had been severely wounded at the battle of New Hope Church in November of 1863.  In a nation rent by civil war, along with his personal woes, one could perhaps understand if Longfellow had been deaf to the joy of Christmas that year.   Having suffered a grave personal loss this year, the death of my son Larry on May 19, I can attest that the message of salvation and eternal life that Christmas brings has a special meaning to me this year.

Christmas Bells

I HEARD the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

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, good-will 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, good-will to men.

The poem was set to music by John Baptiste Calkin in 1872.  Another version was written by Johnny Marks in the 1950s.