Saturday, November 5, 2011

Christmas Bells

When Christmas time came, I always listened to my Christmas tapes. Mostly they are of Organ and Chimes and handbell choirs which I love to listen to but are very rare to find. Well as you know, tapes don't really last very long, and even upon making a back up, it  just doubles the problem. So one day upon cleaning up my apartment and getting rid of old things, I  got rid of all my tapes as they were very old and probably were worn out. One of my all time favorite Christmas tapes that I threw out was called Christmas Bells which was seen on an infomercial in the 1990's by The home Shopp inc. I had loved it as the bells were of an orchestrated hand bell choir and sometimes mixed in with a concert and singing choir. I had a few all time favorite songs like Jesu Bambino. But knowing that transfering tapes to cd was illegal, I tore up any attempts I had done to transfer it to Cd. I had remembered that there was a Cd version of it as shown on the infomercial, but I didn't have a cd player back then as it was a new media.
      So I had regreted throwing it out and missed it dearly, so I had searched the internet for a year or so trying to find the cd version which is out of print. Then one day, I got lucky and found it on Ebay, and I bought it on the spot without any competition. I was soo happy and it only costed me about $6.00 or so. I was eternally grateful as my Christmas will be merry as the Christmas bells shall ring once again. Now the only other ones I have to try and find are "Robert Rhimes Christmas Organ and Chimes, Berkshire's Bellringers, and the old tradtional Christmas Organ and Chimes ( the one that somehow reminds me of a nursing home for some reason) But they are all great  to listen to even as background music while opening the Christmas presents.

The Bedtime Prayer Reminder card with glowing cross

I had  gotten one of these back in the 1970's when I went to a church with our neighboor Ms. Bect and her son Joey. I don't exactly remember the name of the church we went to, but I do remember seeing some old bridge we went over that overlooked a small brook. The church was very historic and huge as parts of it were made of old stones. I remember I was still angry and upset as my mom had divorced my biological father. I was attending some kind of school program there. After we attended church service up stairs, we went downstairs to their basement to sing songs, pray, and we even got a snack of juice and those sandwich cookies. I  remember that the door downstairs was huge, and heavy and made of wood with those metal pointy bar designs on the side of the door. Anyway, after one day at this school, our teacher gave us these bedtime prayer reminder cards that had an image of Jesus knocking at someone's door on the top half of the card. Then on the bottom half there was a dark blue shield that had a soft texture. And inside that shield was a special cross that glowed in the dark upon it being exposed to light.
I remember seeing this hanging on the wall in my bedroom, as I enjoyed it's pleasant glow.
One day, I guess I threw it out as it had lost it's glow. Our neighboor Ms. Becht remembered this and I had asked her about it many times. She remembered what it was and told me that she will look for it.
Then one day, when I came to her house for her garage sale, she found one and gave it to me. It was a very nice thing for her to do. I continued to hang onto it and enjoyed it's pleasant glow. Sadly, the cross had lost it's glow again, and I may have thrown it out again. I know that I sometimes get nostalgic for something long ago, and go crazy in finding it, and when I get it, I throw it out because something's wrong with it. But sometimes I regret what I had done and go crazy searching the internet for it. This time I lucked out and found a similar image of what it was, but it featured a picture of a little girl holding a sheep. The bottom of the picture reads "Bedtime Prayer Reminder" And on the bottom is a larger red heard with the same glowing cross in it. On the very bottom it says "Jesus Cares" It's very similar to what I had and it may lead to another comeback of a lost item.
The company that made it was The Borrowed Timers and it was printed and distributed by Warner Press in 1943. I had attempted to contact the company for info and hope that they have a few leftover, even if it's been out of print. But you never know.