BY DANNY INGRAM

Special To The Bulletin

ATLANTA--My favorite part of Midnight Mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is when I climb way up into the old bell tower and await the signal from down below to ring the big bell at midnight.

Some years back a new electronic system was installed that tolls on the hour, but the automated system can’t ring “festival” bells, it can only pull the hammer over at a moderated pace. It still takes a human touch to make the old bell sing out. It is cold and quiet and somehow ancient up in the bell tower--dusty and timeless--very reflective.

Some people say that Christmas is for kids. Children can still experience the wonder and excitement and brightness of Christmas. Not all children. Not the cold or hungry. But most children perhaps. Even so, I don’t think Christmas is for kids. Nor do I think it’s always for those of us celebrating beautiful rituals in the bright warmth of our wonderful old church.

I think there’s a lot about Christmas that’s lost on the “haves” of the world. There’s something about those of us who “have” the brightness and the warmth that keeps us from appreciating what Christmas can really mean to those who do not have. Often times it’s hard for folks down below in the church to hear the bell when it rings. And I’m not sure it’s really for them that I ring the bell.

When I pull that rope at midnight and that old bell explodes out over the cold silence of the dark Atlanta night, I imagine it is heard by the few folks still out on the street who weren’t lucky enough to get into one of the night shelters. And I imagine its faint cry reaches down to Grady Hospital and the Edgewood where someone might still be awake to hear its promise. I ring it for the merchant over at Underground who might be up late counting receipts for the tenth time and wondering if there’s enough business to make it through another year.

I ring that bell hard, and loud, and strong, frequently with tears streaming down my face. And just maybe if I can ring it loud enough it will reach out to the ears of those we can’t see or hear anymore. And they will know still that they are loved. And we miss them. And we think about them.

Christmas is not necessarily for the warm and happy and content. It is for the cold--the frightened--the broken. It is a message that hope is still possible. That light may yet find its way into a dark and empty world. That miracles still occur. That the outcast will be welcome at the table. That Peace is possible.

It is only for those who have little else to believe that hope is still a precious gift in a landscape of darkness. It is for those people that the message of birth is more than just a ritual. Only the truly broken possess the courage to trust in things they cannot grasp in their hands. It is for those people that the time of light is most real. It is for those people that the celebration is most meaningful. And it is for those people, waiting quietly in the still darkness, that I ring my bell.

Ingram, a member of the parish advisory council at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, wrote this for the Shrine’s newsletter.