Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did
But they were sleigh bells, not church bells, for we lived in a part of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where there were no churches
My bells were on my father’s team of horses as he drove up to our horse-headed hitching post with the bobsled that would3 take us to celebrate Christmas on the family farm ten miles out in the country
My father would bring the team down Fifth Avenue at a smart trot, flicking his whip over the horses’ rumps and making the bells double their light, thin jangling over the snow, whose radiance threw back a brilliance like the sound of bells
每一个圣诞节都是由铃铛声拉开序幕的,我童年记忆中的圣诞节总是如此
但那不是教堂里的铃铛,而是雪橇上的铃铛,因为我们家居住在爱荷华州的细达河洛佩兹的一个地区,那个地区没有教堂
我的铃铛在我父亲拉雪橇的马队里
我家有一个马头形的拴马桩,父亲会把马儿们赶到拴马桩那儿把大雪橇套在马身上,带