The American Spectator : The Bell Ringers' Christmas Present

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Special Report

The Bell Ringers' Christmas Present

By Jeffrey Lord on 12.22.09 @ 6:08AM

A Christmas message of freedom from a Pennsylvania minister and Paul Revere.

(Page 3 of 3)

And one more thing. Yes, the government will be taxing you for getting a tan. Really.

As a result of all this and more no's -- no you can't run a car company without the government taking it over, no you can't refuse government money being injected into your bank, no you are not free to earn the salary you negotiate in a private and free market -- in a striking fashion, the American people are turning into a nation of bell ringers.

True to their history, to a nation where bell ringers for liberty are cherished whether they were the Pilgrims of 1620 or the Founding Fathers of 1776 or anti-slavery activists of 1860 or the anti-Nazis and anti-Communists of 1940 or 1980, Americans are standing up to make themselves heard. To ring the figurative and sometimes literal bells of liberty.

This is Christmas, not the Fourth of July. A religious holiday not a purely secular celebration. Yet whether it is the Christmas bell ringers of a Pennsylvania church in 2009, or those who rang the great, cast iron bell immutably linked to that original Fourth of July of 1776, the animating spirit behind both is unmistakably the same. And that spirit is making itself heard, once again, across the land.

In a season when the poem most often recalled is undoubtedly Clement Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas there is another that is perhaps not only appropriate but a harbinger of the politics of 2010.

Paul Revere's Ride is the legendary work of the quintessential American and New England poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Taught to schoolchildren who grew up in Massachusetts, memorized under fear of the teacher's wrath, it is the very symbol in verse of the American spirit that so instinctively surfaced in 2009. The poem closes this way:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

In this Christmas season of 2009, with the subject at hand the preservation of American freedom and liberty at home, with young Americans at risk around the globe defending that freedom -- and sadly at risk even on an American army base in the heart of America itself -- the poems of Clement Moore and Longfellow, messages both of freedom, are worth remembering. One, a simple, popular celebration of Christmas, the other, a celebration of the right that protects that celebration of Christmas.

That message has been delivered anew by a choir of Pennsylvania bell ringers and a minister, Americans who stood their ground in a small and almost unnoticed fight for the freedom to celebrate Christmas. And won.

Let freedom ring.

Merry Christmas.

Page: < 1 23

topics:
Christmas Carols, Religious Freedom

About the Author

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (21) | Leave a comment

Louis Jenkins| 12.22.09 @ 9:01AM

Reverend Phil Cockrell had the bells to tell the mall officials they were out of line. That needs to happen more often. It is befitting that this incident was in Boston, the cradle of the American Revolution.

A modern day Paul Revere like figure is not needed. The country side has been informed, we know what is coming, and what is required. We will soon need to assemble on the town's green. God be with us.

Tim| 12.22.09 @ 10:11AM

Obviously the dollars of grateful atheists were not as attractive to the Mall merchants as those of benighted christian families.

Stephanie| 12.22.09 @ 3:10PM

That's because there are more Christians than atheists.
Merry CHRISTmas Tim.

Ken (Old Texican)| 12.22.09 @ 11:33AM

Mr. Lord, thank you for that.

Louis, Amen, but the editors and writers here at AmSpec have fulfilled that Ride quite admirably.

...and Merry Christmas to all of you editors and authors at Amspec.

Margie| 12.22.09 @ 12:15PM

Rev. Cockrell's is a wonderful example of how we all ought to be!
What an encouragement he is!
Praise God for him!
Merry Christmas and thank you Mr. Lord for sharing his story, the story of freedom and how it's lived.

Liberal Reader| 12.22.09 @ 1:45PM

Mr Lord,

This is a sad story. I urge everyone to fight against the secularization of Christmas in all its forms. You said it best when you pointed out that this holiday is not, like July 4th, a secular holiday. It is a Christian holiday, and there is no reason why displays of Christian faith should not take place in the public sphere.

Let's be very clear, however, what happened in the narrative you relate.

The Scrooge in this story (as in the original) is an agent of the FREE MARKET.

The MALL wants to purge itself of faith.

I wonder why?

Could it be unrestrained consumerism -- the gaping, greedy maw of capitalism -- is threatened by the message of Christianity?

I've always thought that the culture a "free market" craves is one devoid of what once was called "communitas," seasons of fellowship and good will that once popped up on the western calander every other month or so but are now confined maybe to two or three single holidays.

Consumerism has been unfriendly to the festive, beginning in the late sixteenth century in England where protestants began stripping the people of their treasured holidays in order to "free" them to work harder on the behalf of the wealthy. Long live freedom!

SoCon| 12.29.09 @ 9:53PM

Godless fascist liberals like yourself, LibReader, are at the core of shallow, materialistic selfishness in our country.

You and others like you crave power and control and will use the iron fist of oppressive government to get it.

You are the enemy.

JimE| 12.22.09 @ 5:04PM

LB,
You remain a textbook example of a shithead. It wasn't capitalism that caused the problem, it was PC lefist shitheads like yourself at the root cause.

Liberal Reader| 12.22.09 @ 7:44PM

Jim E --

The rise of the free market coincided with the neutralization of the public sphere, the secularization of public life. This story represents the secular imperative of consumerism: it has nothing to do with people like me.

Conservatives very often get this kind of issue wrong -- particularly social conservatives. The nasty, coarse nature of modern culture, the tradition-stomping "creative destruction" of markets, the apathy towards whatever is old and reverend: if these things concern you, your problem is with CAPITALISM.

Read the real conservatives of the 18th and 19th century: Johnson, Burke, Ruskin, Emerson. There's no love for bustle and businesses to be found in their books.

As for you eloquent denunciation of me as a "shithead," all I can say is, there is no such thing as a Silent Night in a strip mall. Now, you are an unimaginative and shallow ass, but I wish you had someone setting a better example for you. You don't and it's a damn shame, so you'll go on being a brazen fool.

SoCon| 12.29.09 @ 10:01PM

So funny, you're such an asshole. Liberal dirt bag hippies were the ones who screwed anything that walked, smoked and injected any substance not tied down and are now trying to take over our country through atheistic, communist force. Good values for sure.

"If it feels good, do it." The motto of scum infested, blame America first Liberals who need to have the crap beaten out of them.

You are a scourge, LibReader; a brain dead communist who doesn't deserve the greatness of our land. We will defeat you.

Liberal Reader| 12.22.09 @ 9:19PM

Erasmus points us back to the "cenobitic" life led by Jesus and his first followers: communistic and simple, the first Christians disdained property and hoarding and believed that money was unclean.

All possessions were kept in common by the Jesus and his followers: there could be no gift giving because nothing was owned so that it might be given. Those who arrived late were assured the same share as those who were along since morning, since need and not worth was considered first.

Should we go back to this? Probably. I have no idea how it'd be done.

But Christmas as a yearly economic stimulus plan, in which the harried and the harassed spend themselves into debt to impose useless plastic crap made in China on others?

Christian communism begins to sound very attractive this time of year. How is it we get it exactly right for Thanksgiving, but so easily miss the mark this time of year?

SoCon| 12.29.09 @ 10:02PM

Communism is atheistic, moron; something you conveniently ignored.

Jeffrey Lord| 12.22.09 @ 9:44PM

LR...

Matthew 20 shows Jesus standing up for capitalism. Without doubt.

Liberal Reader| 12.22.09 @ 11:48PM

Mr Lord --

I think there must be just a little tongue and cheek in your post.

That parable has baffled the ages -- like most of Jesus' parables.

I wouldn't claim my reading has any special authority.

However, as you know, there was no such thing as "capitalism" in Jesus's time. Perhaps the lesson Jesus is teaching is amenable to capitalism; perhaps not.

Going to Jesus for permission to be a capitalist is a little like going to Jesus for family values: fact is, he bid men not work and leave their families. The great Kierkegaard had it right: there is absolutely nothing easy about Jesus, nothing safe, nothing pat. He always challenges and upsets everything he gets near. At least we can agree Christians never need be bored! And happy Christmas to you.

Liberal Reader| 12.23.09 @ 12:01AM

To be fair, the issue of Christian communism has been questioned and debated since the middle ages. Augustine thought about it, and many others.

The general idea has been that while Jesus and his followers lived with virtually no property, and while they eschewed acquisitiveness and profit-seeking, there is no reason why Christians cannot engage in these practices. Even Erasmus and later More defended against the more radical notions of communism that were beginning to take hold in their day. Certainly Luther -- though he prattled on about how great the early church was -- had no interest in egalitarian society.

Still -- it's good for you worshipers of the Invisible Hand of the Free Market to be reminded every now and then that our way of conceiving a free market is not necessarily the only just way of thinking about economics, and the way the early Christians lived does present an alternative.

Margie| 12.23.09 @ 7:25PM

Liberal Reader.. My oh my.
The early Christians (for those who don't know) shared all things and had all things in common by CHOICE, and as Christians, united in Him. This is not what you are calling Communism, but living communally. Nothing to do with an oppressive GOVERNMENT with Government thugs telling them how to live. They lived as God intended them to live.

Now..when did a free people ever CHOOSE Communism willingly? Never. It's always been imposed.

LibRead embodies, typifies, and perfectly illustrates the expression "grasping at straws."

When did peopl

Obie Wan| 12.23.09 @ 12:23AM

Ha,ha, yeah bozo, it's capitalists who've been running around the last 25 years or more bitching about separation of church and state everywhere in society they can be heard not liberals. Come on huh, go try sell your bull someplace else !!!

Yosemeti Sam| 12.23.09 @ 2:47AM

" The Bell Ringers' Christmas Present".

Christmas presents for 2009?

Via the democrat party?

Consider:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

See table A-1.

From Nov 2008 - the year BHO was catapulted
to the Presidency, thanks to the acid anti-GOP
LMSM - to Nov 2009 the stats show an employment elimination of 6,642,000 jobs.

Hmmmm.

Erstwhile, while Bush was in office in Nov 2008, the employment rate was statistically 6,642,000 jobs MORE!

According to BHOs' Rasputin mouthpiece,
America is on the mend economically.

Carville, what do you think - stupid?

Yosemeti Sam| 12.23.09 @ 10:49PM

Hmmmm.

No one fact-checked my 'jobs lost' figure
re Nov 2008 to Nov 2009 !

Off by a cool million. 'Only' really a measly
5,642,00 jobs lost over said time period.

There you go: 1 million jobs instantly 'saved'
by - me. LOL.

Invitational gotcha gambit to liberals - declined.

Didn't want to touch those numbers if they
weren't linked to Bush.

LOL.

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