A few Christmas seasons ago, at a time when we were embroiled in the wars in and about Iraq, I was busy doing something in the kitchen when an old Christmas carol popped into my head and I started singing it as I worked.
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day in 1864. He had lost his wife in a fire, and his son had been wounded in the Civil War. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day was his response.
I hadn't thought of the song for years, but now, alone in my house, I imagined Longfellow, listening to the bells on Christmas Day, searching for the right words to talk about despair and reaching for a thread of hope.
So I'm singing this song around the kitchen when suddenly my voice broke into a sob and I couldn't finish it. Instead, I cried. And it wasn't the only time that season. I was never able to sing all the verses of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day at any time that year. It choked me up. Every damn time.
Was it Martin Luther King who said that the "arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice?" Longfellow and King both reached for that elusive thread in the hardest of times, as do we.
This is the version I learned and that I use when I try to sing it:
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th'unbroken song
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.'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.'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.
But here's another sweet version.