Each time I hear that sound...

Each time I hear that sound, it reminds me of jingle bells. Jingle bells remind me of Christmas, and until recently, Christmas was my very favorite time of the year. Not because it celebrates Jesus’ birthday, although when I was a kid and went to Sunday School, we did get a lot of teaching about The Christmas Story (or, according to my Baptist church pastor, The Greatest Story Ever Told.)  

But for me, it was all the commercial stuff and family stuff and decorations and anticipation and opening presents. My mother always made sure we had lots of presents, even when she wrapped everything separately.  Two pairs of socks; two presents. Coloring book and crayons. Two presents.  It was driving to Grandmother and Granddaddy’s house early Christmas morning and having dinner there with them and Aunt Olive and Uncle William, and then driving back to our town in the afternoon and going to Grandmother and Pa’s house and eating leftovers and seeing all the aunts and uncles and cousins on that side of the family.
It was seeing the Christmas lights in the stores and in people’s windows.  There was one year when blue bulbs in electric candles in every window was very popular in the ritzier section of our town.  I didn’t care for the blue bulbs.  For me, Christmas colors were green and red and white, and maybe gold and silver.  But not blue.

My mother used to buy a package of jingle bells at the dime store and tie them into the bows on the packages.  Then, knowing my mother, she saved them to use again the next year.  Along with the bows and the paper that wasn’t too damaged by the Scotch tape.

One year, the Budweiser Clydesdale horses came to our town for a Christmas parade, and they happened to start the parade near the street where we lived.  And when I walked home from school on the last day before Christmas vacation, there were the horses and their bell; it was absolutely magical.

I still love the sound of jingle bells.  I have a pair of jingle bell earrings that I drag out at least once every Christmas season and annoy everyone, including myself after about an hour of jingle jingling every time I move my head.  But I still do it.  It’s a tradition.

I even like the sound of jingle bells on TV commercials starting in about September or October nowadays.  It used to be the day after Thanksgiving that Christmas decorations and songs and commercials appeared, but Retail Commerce has kept inching the season longer and longer.  Soon it will be the day after the 4^th of July fireworks die down.  If that happens, maybe I will get satiated with the sound of jingle bells.  And that would be a shame.