Christmas Bells

Teared up tonight singing the old carol, "I heard the bells on Christmas Eve." Been that kind of year.

Did you know the story behind this carol? I didn't until tonight.

The carol is based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (who actually frequented the home where I sung his song tonight, but that's another story) Like many carols and hymns, we sing a sanitized version of this song, with at least two of the stanzas -- referring to the horrors of the Civil War -- omitted completely. By removing these verses, we remove the immense pain within Longfellow's original poem -- leaving a hollow shell of a carol stage-ready for a TV special with Johnny Mathis or Michael Bublé.

Longfellow is a broken man when he writes this in 1864. For three years, the Civil War has obliterated the nation. And in July 1861, just a few months after the first shots of the Civil War are exchanged, Longfellow's wife, Fanny, is mortally burned when her dress catches fire in their Cambridge, MA, home. Longfellow would suffer severe burns to his face as well jumping on Fanny attempting to put out the fire. This is why he'd wear a beard the rest of his life. "How inexpressibly sad are all holidays," he'd write following Fanny's death.

Two years later, a horrendous war hits the Longfellow home. Longfellow's son, Charles, is fighting with the Union army in Virginia in 1863 when he is critically wounded by a Confederate bullet that strikes his spine and nearly paralyzes him. He lives, but barely. He'll not fight again.

A year later -- on Dec. 25, 1864 -- the war still soaking the South with blood, a heartbroken Longfellow pens his now-famous poem. The carol begins with the upbeat verses many of us know:

​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!

We don't, however, sing the fourth and fifth stanzas -- which were ripped from the headlines at a time when the country's peace and goodwill are shattered by a bloody and needless war:

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!

We sometimes sing the sixth stanza -- a generic reminder of the hate that too often "mocks the song" of peace and goodwill. But absent the context of the verses about the war -- not to mention Longfellow's deep personal losses -- these words somehow lack the groaning with which they were no doubt written:

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!"

But then, out of the ashes, we get stanza seven. And this is where I teared up tonight. We can choose to live in the sixth stanza if we want. It's quite easy, actually -- all the evidence is there that the verse rings true. Freddie Gray. Aleppo. Charleston. The election.

And yet.

Longfellow didn't stay there, despite losing his wife in their home. Nearly losing his son. Watching his nation being torn in two by hate. For Longfellow, the story of Christmas was greater than the depths of personal and political despair. What courage and faith it must have taken to write these words:

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!"

​Maybe you dwell in stanza six. I'm not blaming you if you do. There are plenty of good reasons to do so. But take heart: "the wrong shall fail / the Right prevail / with peace on earth, good-will to men!"❤️