My favorite Christmas Carol is I heard the bells on Christmas Day based on Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
“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!”
This poem was just one of the reasons Henry Wadsworth Longfellow became a Rock Star of the New York literati. It’s an example of how his poetry is sensitive without being sappy. He was able to capture the warmth and depth of the human experience in tender times and in painful ones.
“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!”
He takes the simple moment of hearing church bells ring on Christmas morning and puts into poetry that complex feeling they stir. Nostalgia for the Christmas of our youth, the timeless message of God becoming flesh out of love, conflicted with the stress and pain of contemporary life, war, and political hatred.
“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!”
Yes, this poem was written during the civil war. At the lowest time of Wadsworth’s life. His wife had suffered a painful, untimely death shortly before his oldest son enlisted in the Union Army. His life had been torn apart. Every time he looked in a mirror, his own facial scars reminded him of that horrible day. His wife’s dress had caught fire. He was severely burned himself as his wife screamed and burned alive under him and he tried to extinguish the flames. She died of her burns and he stopped shaving to escape seeing his own scars in the mirror. He confided to close friends he worried he would be committed to an insane asylum due to his uncontrollable outbursts of inconsolable grief.
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“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!”
He poured all this sorrow into this poem after receiving word that his son suffered severe injuries during a skirmish. Upon arriving at his bedside, the doctors informed him his son would likely be paralyzed (if he even survived his injury).
“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.”
This is what triumph of the human spirit looks like. Longfellow’s son did recover. He was not paralyzed. Most importantly, Longfellow himself was able to give voice to his pain, grief, and through his poetry he helps us today as we process our own modern experiences of war, pain, and loss. As drones kill civilians along with their targets, barrel bombs take down indiscriminate targets, refugees are turned away from safety and reactionary fear and hatred polute our airwaves, listen to the carrol “I heard the bells on Christmas Day” and courageously send out your own cry into the chaos of hatred this Christmas,
“peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Read ~ Write ~ Wander
~Angie
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