High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘jingle bells’

The cherries are blushing with ripeness now and dangle from the tree like a crowd of jingle bells.  I can almost hear their tintinnabulation in the breeze.

“Tintinnabulation” – a glorious word, that.  It comes from the Latin word for bell, and from tintinnare, which means “to jingle.”  Unless you read Edgar Allen Poe in school, you probably never heard it before.

It’s not a word that pops lightly into my thoughts on a regular basis either.  It came to me tonight by Special Delivery.

I had just selected and named today’s photo when my phone rang.  It was my dear old chum, Michael, calling from half way across the country just to say hello and to tell me a story from our high school days.

I had set out, it seems, to help Michael build his vocabulary, and for every ten words he learned, I rewarded him with a kiss.  One of the words, he said, was “tintinnabulation,” and not only has he remembered it all these years, but often when he hears a bell ring he thinks to himself, “It must be Susie calling.”

Personally, having watched the movie A Wonderful Life a zillion times, I associate the ringing of bells with angels getting their wings.  But either way, the ringing of a bell means joy.

And whether its jingle rings silently from cherry trees or comes pealing as memory across the years, may you share its abundance freely and taste its sweetness on your lips.