The Bells Of Christmas

The Bells Of Christmas

There had been silence for forty-five years.

NICOLAE CEAUSESCU was dictator of Romania for twenty-five years. Referred to as “the Antichrist” by Romanians, he was unusually brutal and corrupt, even for a Marxist ruler. His reign was enforced by secret police called the Securitate, whose members were recruited largely from the state orphanages. Having as his goal a nation of 100 million people, Ceausescu outlawed contraceptives and abortions and penalized the unmarried and the childless. The most able male orphans were placed in cadet battalions in their early teens and indoctrinated into fierce loyalty to Ceausescu. As members of the Securitate, they were among the few Romanians who regularly had enough to eat.

In 1989 the Communist regimes of Europe were toppling, but Ceausescu felt that he was secure. The one problem of which he was aware was Romania’s large Hungarian minority. There had been an active revolution in the Hungarian town of Timisoara, and Ceausescu had sent in the Securitate to put down the revolt. They did so with frightening force. Later a mass grave was discovered that was reported to contain the bodies of 4,630 Hungarians.

Feeling that he had dealt with the Hungarian problem, Ceausescu went on a scheduled visit to Iran. Once there, however, he received news that the Hungarian unrest was spreading, even to the capital city of Bucharest. He returned immediately and on December 21 addressed a crowd in front of the presidential palace. In the past, loudspeakers had supplied cheers and applause while the crowd listened in silence. This time the angry crowd shouted and hurled abuse at the dictator. Never having been treated like this before, Ceausescu stalked back into the palace followed by his furious wife, Elena.

As the situation escalated the next day, Ceausescu and his wife were forced to flee the presidential palace by helicopter. By this time the armed forces had turned against him, and the Ceausescus were captured as they fled.

On Christmas Day, December 25, 1989, a military court tried Ceausescu and his wife on charges of genocide and the murder of sixty thousand Romanians. They were quickly convicted and executed by a firing squad.

The residents of Bucharest wept openly as for the first time in forty-five years their church bells rang, proclaiming the death of the “Antichrist” and the birth of the Christ, as if the carol were written for that day:

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along th’ unbroken song

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

Till, ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

And in despair I bowed my head,

“There is no peace on earth,” I said,

“For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

Reflection

If you had been a Romanian living in Bucharest on that Christmas Day, how would you have felt when the church bells started to ring? Those under forty-five years of age had never even heard them before. What can we learn from the story of Nicolae Ceausescu?

Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to all whom God favors.”

Luke 2:13-14