# What Do Christmas Bells, Lights and Wreaths Mean to Christians? Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/christian-significance-christmas-bells/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2024-11-27 Updated: 2026-11-05 Christmas bells ring out the birth of Christ and call people to worship. Lights stand for Christ, the light who came into a dark world, and the evergreen wreath, a ring of green with no end, stands for the life he gives, which never ends. All three are things we put where our neighbours will meet them: the bell in the tower, the candle in the window, the wreath on the door. Christians take three of the plainest things in the world and use them to tell everyone who passes that Christ is born. The old bells said it of themselves. A Latin verse often found in old bell inscriptions gives the bell its own voice: "I praise the true God, I call the people, I assemble the clergy." The angel's news to the shepherds was "good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people" (Luke 2:10), and the bell carries it to all who can hear. ## What do Christmas bells mean? Bells call us to worship and announce the joy of the feast, and for centuries they did it for whole towns. In the days before watches and clocks, the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907 tells us, their first use was to tell people the hour of the service. When churches needed to call a whole town or village, bell turrets were built and the bells grew larger, so that a whole town heard from its church tower when it was time to pray. In time a peal of many bells ringing at once came to mean "an element of joy and solemnity befitting great feasts," and Christmas is one of the greatest. Scripture had bells long before church towers, and the first ones rang at the door of God's presence. The robe of Israel's high priest was hemmed with "a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate," and "his sound shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord" (Exodus 28:34–35). Every step the priest took toward God could be heard in the sound of small gold bells. At Christmas the bells ring for the opposite journey, because God has come out to meet us. Bells can ring at the Christmas night Mass itself. A Catholic priest, Fr Francis Hoffman of Relevant Radio, explains: "On very special occasions, the bells are rung during the Gloria: Midnight Mass on Christmas, the Mass of the Lord's Supper, and Easter Vigil." The Gloria is the angels' song, "Glory to God in the highest." Catholic churches leave it out on the Sundays of Advent so that it sounds fresh again on Christmas night, and when the bells ring with it, the church joins the angels. ## What is the story behind "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"? It began as a poem of grief. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "Christmas Bells" on Christmas Day 1863, in the middle of the American Civil War. On 1 December a telegram had told him that his son Charles, a cavalry officer in the Federal army, had been badly wounded; the bullet passed through his back and clipped his spine. In the poem he hears the bells ringing "Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" and then hears the cannon drown them. At its darkest he writes: "There is no peace on earth," I said. The poem does not stop there. "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, good-will to men.'" Charles lived, though his time as a soldier was over. The poem was first set to music in 1872, and it is sung as a carol still. ## Is "Jingle Bells" a religious song? "Jingle Bells" is a winter song about sleigh rides, copyrighted in 1857 as "One Horse Open Sleigh," and it never mentions Christmas, Christ or December. Scripture has a word even for the bells on a horse, though. The prophet Zechariah looked to the day when "the Lord shall be king over all the earth" (Zechariah 14:9), and he wrote, "In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness Unto The Lord" (Zechariah 14:20). On that day even the harness bells will belong to God. ## What do Christmas lights mean to Christians? They stand for Christ, the light who came into our darkness. "I am come a light into the world," Jesus says, "that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness" (John 12:46). In the northern lands where many of these customs grew, Christmas comes near the longest nights of the year. A lit candle or a string of lights in those long nights says what the psalmist said: "For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness" (Psalm 18:28). For centuries those lights were candles, on church altars, in windows and later on the branches of the Christmas tree. A well-loved story credits Martin Luther with the first candlelit tree; it is a legend, and the history of the tree is told in [what the Christmas tree symbolizes](https://christianpure.com/learn/christmas-tree-tradition-history/). Then in 1882 Edward H. Johnson, who worked with Thomas Edison, wired eighty small bulbs of white, red and blue onto the tree in his New York home, and the candle on the branch began to become the string of lights we hang along our roofs. The flame changed, and what it says to us did not. The colours carry no meaning in the Bible; the light itself carries all of it. ## Why do people put a candle in the window at Christmas? Irish families set it there as a welcome. Knock Shrine, Ireland's national Marian shrine, says that since Penal times they have set a candle in the window on Christmas Eve, "whether to welcome wandering priests to say Mass in their homes and indicate a safe house or, as the story goes, to light the way for Mary and Joseph to guide them on their long journey to Bethlehem." Irish emigrants carried the candle with them, and many homes far from Ireland light one still. Jesus spoke of a light set where everyone in the house can see it: "Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house" (Matthew 5:15). A candle in our own window on Christmas Eve can be that light, telling anyone who passes that Christ is welcome in this house, and so are they. ## What does a Christmas wreath mean? The wreath is a ring of evergreens, and Christians see two things in it: life that stays green when everything else is bare, and a circle that has no end. Picture London at Christmas as John Stow's Survey of London describes it, as far back as the fifteenth century at least: "every man's house, as also the parish churches," were "decked with holm, ivy, bays, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green." Every house and every parish church in the city was green in the dead of winter. Holm here most likely means holly, the plant whose thorns and red berries Christians later read as signs of the Passion. The New Testament gives the wreath a deeper meaning still. Its Greek word for a crown, stephanos, means a woven wreath, the kind given as a prize to the winners of the public games. Paul writes of the athletes of his day, "they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible" (1 Corinthians 9:25). James promises "the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him" (James 1:12). The crown of thorns that the soldiers plaited and put on Jesus' head is the same word (Matthew 27:29). So a ring of green on the door is a small picture of the crown he wore for us and the crown he promises us. Inside many homes a second wreath waits for Christmas. The Advent wreath lies flat and holds four candles, one more lit on each Sunday before Christmas; where it came from is explained in [what the Advent wreath symbolizes](https://christianpure.com/learn/advent-wreath-symbolism/). The door wreath hangs where visitors knock, and reminds us of the one who said, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20). ## Are Christmas wreaths religious? A door wreath is not a church object, and many people hang one simply because it is beautiful. The Romans hung greenery on their houses for the New Year long before there was a Christmas, and how the Church met that older custom is told in [are Christmas trees pagan?](https://christianpure.com/learn/pagan-origins-christmas-tree/) On a Christian door the ring of green can say what the word stephanos says: a life without end, and a crown that Christ both wore and promises. The Advent wreath is religious from the start, because its candles count the Sundays to the birth of Christ. Of all the signs of the season, bells, lights and wreaths are the ones we turn outward. When we ring, light and hang them this December, we pass on the news the shepherds heard, and we join a sound that has never stopped: "their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world" (Romans 10:18). --- ## Related reading - [The Christian symbols of Christmas and what they mean](https://christianpure.com/learn/important-religious-symbols-christmas/) - [What does the Christmas tree symbolize?](https://christianpure.com/learn/christmas-tree-tradition-history/) - [What does the Advent wreath symbolize?](https://christianpure.com/learn/advent-wreath-symbolism/) - [Is holly in the Bible?](https://christianpure.com/learn/holly-meaning-bible/) - [What is the true meaning of Christmas?](https://christianpure.com/learn/biblical-origin-significance-christmas/) --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. 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