The bells on Christmas Day — The song and the story

One of my favorite Christmas songs is I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, taken from a poem penned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The poem was written in the middle of America’s Civil War — and the despair engulfed the nation.

It was a time of personal despair for Longfellow. His wife had died tragically. After trimming hair from her seven-year old’s head, she decided to preserve the clippings in sealing wax. Melting a bar of sealing wax with a candle, a few drops fell unnoticed upon her dress. A breeze gusted through the window and the flame engulfed her dress. In a few moments she was gone.

Longfellow wrote on the first Christmas after her death, “How inexpressibly sad are all holidays. I can make no record of these days. Better leave them wrapped in silence. Perhaps someday God will give me peace.”

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 through his spine and killing him.

Three years later, he began to feel some hope again. And on Christmas Day of 1864, he wrote the words of the poem, “Christmas Bells.” The line, “God is not dead,’ is a reminder to all who have lost that there is hope.