I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day

It’s Jess’s week to teach Sunday School. (He and another guy teach on alternate Sundays.) Since he was super busy this week, what with a load of work, choir practice Wednesday night, and the church Christmas program and Christmas dinner on Thursday night, he's having to do all his studying today.

Evidently the lesson has references to Christmas songs in it, as he asked me to find the lyrics for a couple of them. It was in my search for the second song I got really interested. They lyrics of “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I’ve loved his poetry since I was a child and first came across it in an old book someone gave me, but I didn’t know the story behind this particular poem and subsequent song made from it. Here’s the poem as it was originally written:

"Christmas Bells"

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

I’d be willing to bet you’ve never heard it sung with all those verses. More likely this traditional version is what you've heard or sung:

In case you haven’t guessed from the words of the original poem, it was written during the Civil War. And from what I’ve read, it seems the feelings behind this song were about three years in the making. While the whole nation was living through the tragedy of the Civil War, the Longfellow house was hit with its own tragedies.

In the summer of 1861, the Longfellow family was living in the Craigie House overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was a hot summer, and Longfellow’s wife, Fanny, decided to trim the hair of their 7-year old little girl to remove some of the weight of it, and hopefully allow her to be more comfortable.

As mother’s sometimes do, she wanted to save a few of the curls. She got a bar of sealing wax, and melted it with a candle, so she could preserve them. What she didn’t notice was a few drops of the wax dripped onto her light-weight summer dress.

About that time a breeze blew through the window, and ignited the wax on her dress, causing it to burst into flames. Fanny ran into the nearby library, trying to spare her children the sight of their mother in flames. Longfellow was in the library and tried to put out the flames with a small throw rug. The rug wasn’t big enough to do the job, so he threw his arms about his wife, trying to extinguish the flames.

Talk about love in action.

Longfellow’s face, arms and hands were severely burned. Fanny died the next day, and Henry Longfellow was too ill from his own burns to be able to attend the funeral.

The first Christmas after Fanny's death, Longfellow wrote, "How inexpressibly sad are all holidays." The following year, December 25th 1862, he wrote in his journal, “’A merry Christmas' say the children, but that is no more for me."

But tragedy wasn’t done with the Longfellow family. Almost a year later, Longfellow received word that his oldest son Charles, a lieutenant in the Army of the Potomac, had been severely wounded with a bullet passing under his shoulder blades and taking off one of the spinal processes. However, he did NOT die, so contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t his son’s death that spurred Longfellow to write “Christmas Bells.”

However, I’d guess it’s safe to say that his wife’s death, his son’s serious injury, and the Civil War as a whole were much in Henry Longfellow’s mind when he wrote the poem on Christmas Day of 1864. Though the song speaks of despair, in the end it offers hope.

The music for the Christmas carol, “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” came from John Baptiste Calkin. He rearranged the verses of “Christmas Bells” and left out the two with more direct references to the Civil War.

The traditional music and verses were used in the above rendition of the carol, which is quite nice. However, while searching for a video, I came across a little different version I reallly like. It's sung by the group, Casting Crowns.

That's what we need not just at Christmas, but all year long,

.

"Peace on earth,
.
good will to men."