Christmas Carols and Songs We Love : I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day

I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day

Words:  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1864

Music:  John Baptiste Calkin, 1872

An older  version  of this song  is at THIS LINK

A more contemporary version is HERE

THE STORY BEHIND THE SONG:

As with any composition that touches the heart of the hearer, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" flowed from the experience of Longfellow-- involving the tragic death of his wife Fanny and the crippling injury of his son Charles from war wounds.  Henry married Frances Appleton on July 13th 1843, and they settled down in the historic Craigie House overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They were blessed with the birth of their first child, Charles, on June 9th 1844, and eventually, the Longfellow household numbered five children-- Charles, Ernest, Alice, Edith, and Allegra. "Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers" (Proverbs 17:6). 

Tragedy struck both the nation and the Longfellow family in 1861. Confederate Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard fired the opening salvos of the American Civil War on April 12th, and Fanny Longfellow was fatally burned in an accident in the library of Craigie House on July 10th. In Fanny's attempt to protect Edith and Allegra from fire, she ran to Henry's study in the next room, where Henry frantically attempted to extinguish the flames with a nearby, but undersized throw rug. Failing to stop the fire with the rug, he tried to smother the flames by throwing his arms around Frances-- severely burning his face, arms, and hands. Fanny Longfellow died the next morning. Too ill from his burns and grief, Henry did not attend her funeral. (Incidentally, the trademark full beard of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow arose from his inability to shave after this tragedy.) ... 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.  Lt. Charles Longfellow did not die that Christmas, but lived.  

The message that the Living God is a God of Peace is proclaimed in the close of the carol: "Of peace on Earth, good will to men."

SOURCE