The Story Behind “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”

Most people are familiar with “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Song of Hiawatha,” but it may surprise many to discover that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned a famous Christmas carol. It had been many years since Henry had written a single verse, but in December, 1863, weary after years of depression, he picked up his pen once more and wrote in his journal, “How inexpressibly sad are all holidays.”

Two events led to his bleak view of Christmas. Two years earlier, Fanny, Henry’s wife and mother of their six children, died after her dress caught on fire. Henry, awakened from a nap, tried to extinguish the flames as best he could, first with a rug and then with his own body. She died the next morning. Henry’s own burns were severe enough that he was unable to attend his own wife’s funeral. He stopped shaving on account of the burns, growing a beard that he’d wear for the rest of his life.

Not long after the death of his wife, his oldest son, Charles, stole away to join the Union Army. Knowing his father would stop him due to his deep convictions against violence, Charley left a note: “I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave, but I cannot any longer.” Less than a year later, on December 1, 1863, Longfellow received a fateful telegram: Charley had been injured in a skirmish with Confederate troops during a battle of the Mine Run Campaign.

Knowing the poor conditions of battlefront medical stations, Longfellow immediately left his Boston home to search for his son. After arriving in Washington D.C., he spent three days searching the incoming wounded at the train station, passing up and down the lines of injured soldiers. When he finally found his son, Charley was barely breathing having been shot through the left shoulder, with the bullet exiting under his right shoulder blade. It had traveled across his back and nicked his spine. Fortunately, Charley avoided being paralyzed by less than an inch.

Once Charley was stabilized, although still suffering and weak from “camp fever,” Henry took him home to Boston. A few weeks later, on Christmas Day, his son still shivering from a fever, Longfellow began to write a poem. With each line, he described the darkness he’d endured, but then something miraculous occurred: in the midst of the dark, heavy fog of depression, the sound of bells broke through:

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.”

Charley did eventually recover, and he and his father were reconciled, but this wartime Christmas poem-turned-song still rings as a testament to God’s healing of the human spirit in the worst of times. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/the-story-of-pain-and-hope-behind-i-heard-the-bells-on-christmas-day/

Selah Award finalist Sherri Stewart loves a clean novel, sprinkled with romance and a strong message that challenges her faith. She spends her working hours with books—either editing others’ manuscripts or writing her own. Her passions are traveling to the settings of her books and sampling the food. She traveled across the Atlantic on an ocean liner to research An Uncommon Gift. A widow, Sherri lives in Orlando with her lazy dog, Lily. She shares recipes, tidbits of the book’s locations, and other authors' books in her newsletter.

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An Uncommon Gift

Ella Davis’s papa always told her there’d be no class difference in Heaven, but Ella has years to live on God’s green earth until she reaches her reward. She’s content to be a maid on the Huntington Estate, as long as she has her books and her kitten. But when her ladyship, Amberly Huntington, coerces Ella to take her place on the Mauretania, the fastest ocean liner in 1910, Ella’s worst nightmare has come to pass. She must pretend to be nobility for the eight days it takes to reach New York. In other words, she must live a lie—and this just before Christmas! https://bit.ly/47MTvYX