For whom the holiday bells toll...

Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune on December 12, 2020

Well, this is certainly going to be a different Christmas — like no other that I can recall, and I’ve lived through plenty of them.

 

My parents were around for the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 but they didn’t talk about what effect it had on Christmas that year, other than to say that Duluth churches were closed that fall and masks were worn. And now here we are, masks affixed, 100-plus years later anticipating a holiday season with another global pandemic lurking about everywhere.

 

Tough times. Terrible times. Worrisome times. Very different from so many joyous holidays in the past when, as the poem goes:

 

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. 

 

Yeah, peace on earth. Pretty hard to come by in my lifetime, but even during the dark days of World War II my earliest Christmases were joyous with gifts galore, special food, decorations everywhere and church programs. As I have often complained, in those Sunday school manger tableaux I was always a shepherd, never Joseph. Story of my life.

 

I 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.

 

Segue to 2020. In addition to our COVID19 concerns this year, there has been so much upheaval caused by our national election — still going on weeks later — not to mention the lack of peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, even violence in the streets of America. I’ve never seen the holiday season so grim.

 

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.

 

We’ll be sending out our Christmas cards as usual, but we’re one couple who won’t be gathering with family on Christmas Eve as we’ve always done — always in my lifetime, our now-grown kids’ lifetimes and their kids’ lifetimes. It’s going to be very different, very quiet. Lonely.

 

A certain Jolly Old Elf won’t be swinging by our home this year, so much to the delight of the youngest ones on Christmases past. Our fireplace doesn’t have a regular chimney so the tradition in recent years has been for the white-bearded Saint Nick to pound on the door and throw bundles of gifts in, helped on the inside by an understanding adult, but unseen by kids. Jingle bells, real harness bells, can be heard tinkling in the background as reindeer prepare to resume their flight.

 

Not going to happen this year. Quarantine.

 

Still, we’re grateful no one close has gotten sick so far and hoping against hope that that remains the case. And even as I write this early in December, there’s hopeful news of the development of vaccines that have the potential to turn this pandemic around eventually.

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, God is not dead, and doth not sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.

 

So there’s hope as we move through this very bleak holiday season, even as we approach the shortest, darkest days on the calendar, and, in 2020, in most of our lives.

 

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.

 

So be it?

 

I’d like to thank Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for help in writing this final column before the actual holiday. His words are in italics. And while I’m at it, let me wish everyone as merry a Christmas/Happy Holidays as possible.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

A long, cold ride on an airborne sleigh....

From today's Duluth News Tribune column; you may read it HERE.

May you all enjoy your family traditions this holiday season... whatever they may be.
-Jim

A light that will never fail–by Jim Heffernan...

Deep in December it’s nice to remember, although you know the snow will follow. Deep in December it’s nice to remember, without a hurt, the heart is hollow.
— A stanza from the song “Try to Remember”

Bethany Lutheran Church at 2308 West Third Street. (Image: Google)

It’s not too deep in December yet, but it is far enough into the holiday season to, well, to remember yuletide seasons of the past, as most adults tend to do when thinking of the joy of childhood Christmases.

Before I do that, though, I want to note that this is my final monthly column for Zenith City Online, as it shifts to a more relaxed publishing schedule. I’ve been Zenith City’s western Duluth correspondent since the beginning, designated that because it is the neighborhood of my childhood and youth, my upbringing and education. I’m a Denfeld Boy.

It’s been an interesting ride, writing monthly about some aspect of western Duluth over the years, the columns weighted heavily to the West End, the actual neighborhood of my past. Duluthians of today know the West End is now officially called Lincoln Park, and, to some, West Duluth is known as Spirit Valley.

I’ve learned some things I didn’t know about the history of the neighborhood where I spent the formative years of my life…many things, come to think of it. But today I will revert to a bit of personal history with a reminiscence of the Christmas season in the West End church in which I grew up.

The West End and West Duluth are replete with churches of most Christian denominations. Each one, I know, had Christmas traditions fondly recalled by those who experienced them as children.

What follows here is my own reminiscence of Christmas in the West End’s Bethany Lutheran, 23rd Avenue West and Third Street, where my family worshiped. This column first ran in the Duluth News Tribune in 2001, and was included in the book of 52 of my newspaper columns, Cooler Near the Lake, published in 2008. (You can find the book here.)

Before attaching that column, let me say I’ve enjoyed writing for Zenith City Online these past several years, and appreciate having been included. I continue to operate a blog—jimheffernan.org—on which I write on a variety of subjects from time to time.

Now, here is that column, titled  “A Light That Will Never Fail.”

~~~~~~~~~~

(The previous writing was my introduction to my final monthly post on Zenith City Online. 

Read "The Light that will Never Fail" HERE and in my book.)

Peace on earth–but when?

by Jim Heffernan

Note: Here's a Christmas column I wrote two years ago. It seems to have continued relevance in today's world. We can only hope....  

This is the 34th Christmas that I have been writing a column in this newspaper. I’ve about run out of my own Christmas memories to share with readers – childhood recollections of celebrations with family members long gone, or memories of Sunday school holiday programs enacting the nativity (always a shepherd, never a wise man).

So today, Christmas Eve 2006, I share this space with an old fellow who knew a little something about Christmas – actually the meaning of Christmas. Most readers recognize his name – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – as one of America’s revered poets of the 19th century, but very much out of fashion today.

One of his poems, a series of reflections on peace on Earth, has been set to music with at least two melodies familiar to dedicated carolers. Longfellow has been dead as a doornail for 124 years, so he qualifies as a sort of ghost of Christmas past whose verses reflect all too well Christmas present and some hope for Christmases yet to come -- ideas so nobly advanced by one of Longfellow’s English contemporaries, Charles Dickens.

What follows are Longfellow’s rhymed words in italics, and some prose comments from me in regular type after each verse.

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.

Last week I heard a radio interview with a stateside U.S. Army officer of field-grade rank who spent last Christmas in Iraq. He said spending the holiday in a war zone has forever altered his attitude toward Christmas. “Peace on Earth good will toward men” means nothing to him anymore, he said on National Public Radio.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll’d along,
Th’unbroken song,
Of peace on Earth good will to men.

“Belfries of all Christendom…” Wow, what a powerful image -- thousands of church steeples, their bells resounding in unison. I grew up in a home midway between two long-gone Duluth Catholic churches – St. Clements and Sts. Peter and Paul -- with belfries and bells that rang out twice a day, noon and evening, throughout the year. What a wonderful, hopeful sound. Broken now. Years after Longfellow’s day, during World War II, a lot of the bells from belfries overseas were melted down to make cannons, which brings us, with trepidation, to the next verse:

And in despair I bow’d 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.”

A couple of headlines in the New York Times caught my eye last week. “Attacks in Iraq at record level, Pentagon finds,” read one; “President wants to increase size of armed forces,” read another. It’s the same every day in that and other papers, with no end in sight. The words in that verse are, perhaps, the most prescient of Longfellow’s thoughts. Would that these next were:

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.”

We can only hope.

origninally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on December 24, 2006