Bell ringers’ view of holiday season
The holiday season has come to life in Union Square in the heart of downtown San Francisco. There’s a big menorah to celebrate Hanukkah, a lighted Christmas tree, an ice rink — and the gentle ringing of small white bells next to red Salvation Army kettles.
The bell ringers are there with their kettles in front of Macy’s on Union Square in all weather — driving rain, the pale December sunshine, the chill of late fall — raising money the old-fashioned way.
“It is old fashioned and it is very useful,” said Maj. Darren Norton, commander of the Salvation Army’s Golden State Division. “It is very much a part of the American Christmas and it reminds people that we live in a needy community, that there are people out there who are poor and need help.”
Macy’s is one of 100 locations in the city where the bell ringers are on the job, but the bells and red kettles are all over the world.
The tradition began 127 Christmas seasons ago in San Francisco
with a single crab pot near the Market Street ferry landing, a Salvation Army lieutenant and a bell. Enough money was raised to buy 1,000 Christmas dinners for poor people, and the idea caught on worldwide.
“It was simple and it worked,” said Lt. Kathleen Griffiths, who runs the local program now.
Last year, the bell ringers raised more than $210,000 in San Francisco alone, and $1.7 million in central California. The money comes in small bills and sometimes big ones. It goes to support Salvation Army programs ranging from drug rehab work, meals for the hungry and disaster relief. The army was on hand for all the big fire disasters this year.
Bell ringing is volunteer work and not the easiest job in the world, standing on your feet for hours, ringing away and looking hopeful.
Agnes Boyd, who was at Macy’s the other afternoon, rings her bell vigorously and calls out greetings. “Happy holidays! God bless you!” she says. She had her 4-year-old grandson, Aidan Jones, beside her the other day, making a team that was tough to pass up.
Boyd is a Salvation Army soldier, a veteran of 24 years.
“I had alcohol- and drugaddiction problems, and they helped me,” she said. She works for the Salvation Army in various missions, but looks forward to Christmas bell ringing. “It’s fun,” she said.
A lot of people passed by with only a glance. That’s the nature of the bell-ringing business in the city. People sweep by, mostly in bunches, lost in their own thoughts. Only about one person in 20 on a good day stops to listen to the bell or drop change in the kettle. On a slow day, it’s one in 50.
But when they do, they bring their own kind of light. Mary Ann Alexander stopped by Boyd’s kettle with a fistful of dollars.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Alexander said. “I always look forward to seeing the Salvation Army.”
She had come from Vacaville, with her granddaughter, Addie, who is 9 and lives in Fairfield. Three other relatives came, too. Alexander used to live in the city and comes back to San Francisco every holiday season, an annual tradition.
“I like the hustle and bustle,” she said. “You don’t get that in a small town.”
Alexander’s first job in Christmas past was at the old Emporium department store on Market Street.
“I was a clerk in the credit department and I remember how all the employees used to have to stand at attention every morning to start the day. They waited until a bugle blew and then the store doors opened. A long time ago.”
What she remembered best, though, was the Emporium’s Santa who sat on a big throne, like the king of the holiday. Now she was taking her brood to see Macy’s Santa.
The crowds walking past Boyd ebbed and flowed. A couple of street people came by. One man claimed he was about to donate several million dollars. He knew Oprah Winfrey, he said. Also Frank Sinatra. He began to sing. The sidewalk crowds avoided him.
Then came Dewayen Reneker, a carpenter on his lunch hour, who stopped abruptly, as if on impulse. He is working on building the Muni subway under Stockton Street.
“These people do good work,” he said of the Salvation Army. “I just do my little part.”
He stuffed a $10 bill in the pot, then nipped across Geary Street.
Kenneth Chinn, also spending the day ringing a bell at Macy’s, said he was on the job also because of the help the Salvation Army had given him.
He is 35 and has been at the army’s Harbor Lights center in San Francisco. He had lived in the northern part of the state, Redding, Chico, places like that. He worked in the painting business, painting signs and houses. His shoes were streaked with paint still.
“I had a drug addiction,” he said. “Heroin.”
Things got so bad he lost what he had and lived in his car.
“I had burned my bridges,” he said. “I had nowhere to go, and the Salvation Army opened their doors to me. They took me in.”
He got into a rehab program and he hopes he is on the right track for good. He hopes to go home for Christmas.
So he was out in front of Macy’s ringing a bell, raising money for others.