This Time of Year Has Familiar Ring to It

Standing underneath the “Need Knows No Season” sign, Evangelina Avalos gripped her silver bell from the Salvation Army and waved it in the air. The high-pitched ringing turned the heads of passersby. Some dropped coins or shoved bills in the locked red kettle while others glared at Avalos or rushed by avoiding eye contact.

It’s that time of year. The red-suited bell ringers are back.

The kettles and loud clamor of the Salvation Army bell ringers are familiar to millions of holiday shoppers bustling in and out of shopping malls and post offices, scrambling to buy and send gifts for loved ones.

Not so familiar to harried shoppers is the fact that the Salvation Army is a church: A 3-million-member evangelical denomination with more than 450,000 members in the United States.

“You don’t think the Salvation Army is religious at all,” said Eddie Pankow from Huntington Beach, who parks cars at South Coast Plaza. “I just think of them as a charity.”

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Although well-known for decades of fund-raising during Christmas, the Salvation Army is also a large London-based Christian church. Among practices that distinguish it from other Protestant denominations: Members do not partake in communion or baptisms.

Salvation Army founder William Booth declared in 1883 that those rites wouldn’t be endorsed in the official worship of the church, although he didn’t forbid them. Booth’s wife, Catherine, reportedly admired the piety of the Quakers, who didn’t include baptisms or communion in their church.

Booth began his church in a rundown section of London after proselytizing as a Methodist minister--and realizing that many he sought to convert had basic needs for food, shelter and help.

“He couldn’t speak to someone dead drunk in the gutter about Jesus unless he dealt with that issue first,” said Lee Lescano, captain of the Orange County Salvation Army. “He began the Salvation Army as both a church and a charity. It’s a two-pronged attack.”

Lescano said Booth used military terminology as a way to organize his new denomination and also as an analogy for spiritual warfare that the church was to wage.

“The Bible talks about being good soldiers of Jesus Christ,” Lescano said.

The Salvation Army, founded in 1865, depends upon its close association with the Christmas holidays to raise money. It has set up little red pails around Orange County for 112 years.

The tradition began in San Francisco, where a Salvation Army captain stood on a street corner with a cooking kettle from his kitchen to solicit donations, according to Lescano, who said he hopes to raise $200,000 this year from the red kettles to help more than 3,000 families.

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At South Coast Plaza, there is a rotating stable of volunteers--1,000 total across the county--who brave the sometimes crabby comments from frazzled strangers as they wave their bells asking for people’s loose change.

Some give, say the bell ringers. But most don’t.

“I give clothes to the Salvation Army, but I don’t give to the bell ringers,” said Pankow, the valet. “I’m against panhandling, so I don’t like that. I don’t give to panhandlers unless they have no legs and no arms.”

Bell ringer Maria Gutierrez of Santa Ana wrapped up an eight-hour shift of standing in heels and an ironed Salvation Army suit, asking for money. She called out, “Gracias” and “God Bless,” to those who dribbled coins in her kettle.

“The ringing of the bell bothers lots of them,” Gutierrez said through a translator. “Not many are giving. More gave yesterday.”

Among those who give happily is Trish Spires of Santa Ana.

“Christmas has become too commercial,” said Spires, who dropped an extra $1.30 in a kettle outside a Santa Ana post office. “We’ve forgotten about Jesus at Christmas. This is a nice way to share with others.”

Salvation Army officials say they need more people like Spires.

“We’ve been flat for a few years in the kettles,” Lescano said. “The economy is booming and people are doing well. But people don’t always think about those who aren’t doing so well. There are some very needy people--even in Orange County.”