The Bells Still Ring: Longfellow’s Christmas and Ours

Christmas gets draped in red and green with carolers singing songs of peace and love and joy.

Yet the affairs of the last several days seem to ridicule the season.

A dozen people died on an Australian beach, victims of a madman and his son.

Two young people with futures stolen from them by a yet-unknown killer.

A son murdered his parents, the director Rob Reiner and his wife in what could be an episode of the Twilight Zone.

It’s not a new experience that Christmas doesn’t seem like Christmas.

It happened to Henry.

A happy life torn apart. His wife died in a fire and he was burned trying to save her. A war raged that would drag his son into its blood-soaked fangs.

His son ran off, against his wishes, and joined the Army of the Potomac to fight in the Civil War. He was shot at Gettysburg, and paralysis haunted his future.

A few days after the first official Thanksgiving Day, he received the telegram. The distraught father fled to Washington to hunt for his 19-year-old son aboard a train home.

So on Christmas Day 1863, a 57-year-old widowed father of six…

sat in his home…

with a broken country…

and a shattered heart.

The bells at Cambridge began to peel and people sang angel music from Luke 2:14.

Peace on earth, goodwill to men.

But to him, injustice and violence mocked every syllable of the angels’ anthem.

His anger kindled a fire of words.

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!

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!

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!”

Does that not resonate with you? It does with me. Hate and violence wash over headlines. Fear and anger are the steady diet of politicians and pundits, all hoping to keep a manipulated audience.

The events of a week ago nod their heads in agreement with Henry’s assessment of humanity

But the thought lay unfinished as the bells peeled. Longfellow, the poet of his day, continued.

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.”

God does not slumber, and God is alive. That is the reason Jesus came in the same circumstances. Remember, Herod sent soldiers to slaughter babies.

In the hate… the murder… the treachery of that time—the angels still sang:

“Peace on earth. Goodwill to men.”

In our time of woe, if you listen, you can hear their whisper over the noise.