“It was a dark and stormy night.” These classic
words, used by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 19th century novel Paul Clifford,
are often called the worst opening lines of literature. He obviously hadn’t
read novelist Elmore Leonard’s ten rules for good writing, as rule number one
is direct: “Never open a book with weather.”
Yet how else can I say it? It was a dark and
silent night as we left Jake’s Steakhouse with a full belly, happy and
satisfied. Silent, that is, until I paused to listen to the echo on the wind.
What’s that faint disturbance in the air? As my palms began to sweat, my ears
recognized the clang of the Salvation Army kettle bell, wafting across the
expanse of parking lot and street from its position outside of Buehlers Food
Market. The Salvation Army’s Christmas Kettle Campaign has begun!
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| NORWAY 1950s |
The notes of those bells have been a familiar
companion to me for longer than I want to admit. Mention the now defunct Twin
Fair Discount Department Store in the Buffalo, New York area, and my body
shivers in its memory of the frigid nights ringing that bell as a teenager.
Grand Central Station in mid-town Manhattan was a daily assignment in the late
70’s, an eye-opening exposé of life in the Big Apple for a New Yorker from the
other end of the state. I’ve rung that blasted (oh, I mean blessed) bell in New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and its notes have even invaded my dreams from
time to time.
Drama aside, the Salvation Army bell has been
an effective fund-raising tool since 1891, when Captain Joseph McFee placed an
empty kettle at the Oakland Ferry Landing with a sign reading, “Keep the Pot
Boiling.” His goal was to collect funds for Christmas dinner for the poor of
San Francisco. More than one hundred years later, donations to the Red Kettle
Campaign provide up to 20% of the local unit’s annual operating budget in some
locations, supporting low-income families long after the Christmas stockings
are packed away.
Over my more than forty years of Salvation Army
involvement, I’ve heard the prediction of the demise of the Christmas kettle
time and again. When some malls banned the ringing bell, creative workers
resorted to flipping a hand sign, “ding, dong,” while others used puppets and
ventriloquist dummies to capture the attention of potential donors. Keeping
with the changing times, the Salvation Army has experimented with kettles that
accept credit cards or display the QR code, and offers an online Red Kettle
experience minus the annoying bell and glacial temperatures for the less
intrepid among us.
Like other charities, the Salvation Army also
uses the mail to request donations. My ninety year old mother has gotten on
more than forty of those charitable mailing lists, including the Cold War
Patriots, the Smile Train, and Cal Farley’s – all worthy causes to someone, but
often over-whelming to a generation who feels obligated to give when asked. I’ve
spent about five hours visiting websites this week, requesting her name be
removed from their mailings, definitely a more difficult task than making a
donation in her name.
I’ve sat at most of the chairs around the
charitable giving table, strategizing fund-raising ideas, supporting United
Way, counting the coins dropped into the kettle, writing a personal check to a
cause I support, evaluating grant requests, and worrying long into the night
when the pot is empty. I long for the day when charitable fund-raising is
unnecessary because our neighbors no longer need the services of the Salvation
Army and other agencies of our community, but that day hasn’t come, and so the
bell rings on with its plaintive call: “remember the poor.”
Just as I’ve had to consign my typewriter and
eight-track player to the dustbin, the day may come when the Salvation Army
bell is heard no more at shopping locations across our country, remembered only
as a nostalgic symbol of Christmas past. Other fund-raising gimmicks (oh, I
mean tools) will be explored, and the work of charity will continue, but for
me, if or when that call to remember is silenced, it will indeed be “a dark and
silent night.”
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| OSLO 2013 |
JoAnn Shade
ministered as a Salvation Army officer for thirty-four years, with its
labor-intensive focus on service and fund-raising at Christmas. Following
the completion and the early days of operation of the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps
Community Center in Ashland, she retired in 2012 from the daily
responsibilities of Salvation Army leadership. She is married to Larry, is
the mother of three adult sons, Greg, Drew and Dan, and Lauren, a beloved
daughter-in-law, and is Nana to the lovely Madelyn Simone. With an M.A. in
pastoral counseling and a D.Min. in the Women in Prophetic Leadership track
from Ashland Theological Seminary, she combines her academic training with a
writer’s eye, a pastor’s heart and a grandmother’s joy as she serves the body
of Christ through Gracednotes Ministries.
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