One of the most vivid memories of my childhood was the Saturday after Thanksgiving when my mother and grandmother would bundle my sisters and I into our snowsuits and drive into Pittsburgh to for the annual holiday shopping trip. Even before the turkey hit the freezer on Thanksgiving Thursday I started dreading this trip. The problem as I saw it through my ten year-old eyes was that my mom’s idea of Christmas shopping and mine were radically different. To me, spending a couple of hours in a toy store trying out all the new stuff would be time well-spent. After all, then I’d know what I really wanted Santa to put under the tree. Mom’s idea of shopping, though, was dragging us through as many large department stores as possible having us try on all manner of clothing—usually consisting of polyester dress pants and shirts with lots of buttons. I would be so bored on that Saturday that I wouldn’t notice Mom stuffing all those bags in the trunk of the car and that those same pants and shirts were the ones I opened quickly on Christmas morning before moving on to the good stuff—kind of like eating your vegetables before dessert.
Still, Mom always promised us that if we were good and kept moving our little feet from store to store we’d get to sit on Santa’s lap at the end of the day and tell him that we didn’t want any more socks, thank you very much, but that motorized fire truck I saw in the window at Gimbel’s would do quite nicely. Visions of the jolly old elf dancing through my head, I trudged along the streets of the Steel City through the soot-covered snow with about as much determination as a boy can muster.
Looking back, I don’t remember any of the toys that I asked for, but I do remember being fascinated by the city. The window displays were beautiful, the street lights glowing in the fading afternoon light, people waiting in large crowds to cross the street. Each department store piped Christmas music to speakers out on the street and everywhere you could hear the sound of bells ringing, because on nearly every busy street corner and in front of Horne’s, Gimbel’s, Kauffman’s and all the other stores there was a bundled person ringing a big silver bell next to the red Salvation Army donation kettle. My mom could never pass one without dropping something in. We were a working class family, but mom knew that there were plenty of others out there who were less fortunate than us and that we needed to help them. I remember thinking that it would be great to give them all those extra dress socks.
Christmas shopping nowadays is quite a different experience. It’s easier to shop by pointing and clicking your computer than it is to drive downtown and, even if you did, most of the big old stores have moved out. Stores in malls start putting up their Christmas decorations before the Halloween displays are down, which dilutes the whole season. And, most tellingly, you don’t often hear those silver bells anymore. If the Salvation Army kettle is there at all, there’s a person standing there silently waving a cardboard ringer. After all, we wouldn’t want the sound of a bell interfering with the constant drone of pre-recorded advertising.
I read somewhere recently that the Salvation Army has been hit hard by the decline in kettles and even more so by the lack of ringers. In Knoxville, Tennessee, for example, the Salvation Army had to pay out about $30,000 to hire people to man the few kettles that would be around town during last Christmas season. The decrease in funding that this important charitable organization receives is alarming, but I think the greater problem is that in a culture where the gap between rich and poor gets wider every day, the absence of those bells makes it harder to people to remember that while they’re spending buckets of cash on Christmas there are people down the street who don’t know where there next meal is coming from. Those bells used to ring out tunes of hope, responsibility, giving and benevolence. People used to take pride in standing there, stamping their feet against the cold, because they knew that their volunteering would make a difference.
So if you’re out and about this season and you happen to spot the rare bell-ringer, tell them thanks. They’re doing a lot more than raising money. Maybe you could call your local Salvation Army and pick up a shift for yourself!
