We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head. Most church-bells in the world are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin, but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no family in America without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples ... we took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off toward Zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village, glad to get away from that bell.
Classic.
Our protestant church rings its bells for 30min straight on Saturday and Sunday morning. They are badly out of key too.
Drives me absolutely insane; I actually regard it as noise terreur. The whole village is subjected to it and perhaps 1% in this small village ever makes it to mass. And this is in Romandie too! (The French part).
I wonder what they would do if a mosque tried the same thing.
Regarding your above point...if the mosque was ringing a bell or playing some sort of musical instrument then I would have no problems with it either. The problem is that the mosques blare something similar to a man shouting "their God is the greatest". So in my view as an Atheist I find that offensive plus it's also offensive for some people who follow other religions as it's basically shouting and telling everyone indirectly or directly that the non Islamic God is not great.
A truely fair comparison --> Would a country like say Saudi Arabia allow building of a church firstly and and then would they allow it's bells to ring? Answer is no on both counts.
A good middle ground would be that no religion should be allowed to cause noise pollution
To give a clue about what would happen with a mosque, refer to this article on Swissinfo. The minaret mentioned would have been silent, yet only 2 have managed to pass planning permission (Zurich and Geneva). The SVP recently called on the Zurich mosque to remove the minaret, as a sign that their community was willing to integrate. I guess their preferred option would be that they convert to Christianity and place a cross there instead.
dave
Lucy_sg provided some interesting information about how the bells relate to Christian tradition:
Music Mole mentioned how the bells relate the "peal" in the UK:
Finally, Hasselhoffia noted just when the bells ring near their home. My experience has with the Sunday bells supports this reply, but my bell towers certainly don't stop after 9pm.
Thanks to everyone for your informative, helpful and opinionated replies
I only know that 90% of the time, the 6AM bells wake up our four-month-old baby. And when he wakes, there is no more snoozing in our apartment.
When I was in college, a small mosque was right next to my dormitory. At 5AM (or whenever morning prayer starts), there would always be a lone person singing he morning call to prayer. It was sometimes frustrating if you'd just gone to bed a few hours earlier, but after a while you got used to it, and it was rather soothing.
They ring the bells every morning at 5:30am, for at least 1 minute. Today I don't know what happened, they also rang around 6:40am for 5 minutes. Then comes the regular hourly and half-hourly dings.. Luckily only until 10pm....
Funnily enough, I lived next to an Anglican church in St Albans, but somehow the descending arpeggios of the English bells seemed to be much more melodic and tuneful. Swiss church bells sound like collapsing scaffolding.
Cheers
Jim
I think there is a great opening for vandals who e.g. write on walls for something better to do... well, for those who might like to reeeaaalllyy prove a point, there are many bells to be collected and hidden, never to be found and at least there would be a few weeks peace while the churches had replacement bells made.
... and you wouldn't be getting my complaints either...
I lived in Pfäffikon and instead of taking the posts from the side of the road and laying them so that you had to get out of your car and refit them before continuing, well, they should be plotting how to steal bells...
A lot more constructive I'd say....
As a muslim, i know that the “prayer calls” are meant to call people to mosque to pray, 5 times a day. So the bells also do the same thing on Sundays for christians? If we visit a chirch while the bells are ringing, would we see a prayers’ session?