Finding Meaning: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
December 23, 2024
I can’t find my favorite Christmas song.
I know what it is, but I can’t find it online. It isn’t on Spotify or YouTube. It’s from an old CD by an unknown choir that I got in middle school when I joined my church’s Christmas program as a flutist. We were given the sheet music for 10 Christmas songs and a CD recording of another choir’s performance to help us practice. To this day, despite my best efforts, I have been unable to track down the origins of this CD. One day, my copy will scratch, the file on my computer will corrupt, and I won’t ever be able to hear my favorite Christmas song again.
Life is disappointing like that. In fact, life can be downright cruel, corrupt, and disheartening in far more devastating ways than a simple lost song…Aren’t you glad you chose to read my encouraging Christmas blog post today?! Don’t walk away yet, because this is the setup to my favorite Christmas carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”
For the sake of sharing the experience as best I can, I’ll refer you to the version by Casting Crowns. Theirs is the closest facsimile I have found to my church choir’s version, with a very similar chorus and orchestral arrangement (though with far too many drums, in this flutist’s humble opinion. What can ya do?)
The version I love is mournful, anguished. It opens with a sorrowful piano, and its tone throughout mimics the lyrics themselves:
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said
…these aren’t your standard happy-go-lucky Christmas lyrics. But before you accuse the author of being a downer, listen to their story. The lyrics to this song are taken from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote these gloomy words during the height of the Civil War. His son had been injured in battle just weeks before and was thought to be paralyzed forever. Meanwhile, Longfellow was facing his second Christmas as a widowed man, caring for his 5 living children (1 had died in infancy). He was still grieving the untimely death of his wife, who had been killed in a fire that Longfellow was unable to put out, even when he flung his own body over his wife’s to smother the flames. Longfellow himself had severe burns and disfigurement from the event. He was a scarred man, in more ways than one. And on Christmas day, 1863, as he heard the Christmas bells ringing in Cambridge and heard carolers singing “peace on earth, good-will to men,” he sat down in frustration and penned his now-famous poem “Christmas Bells” (which you can read in its entirety here).
There are many versions of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” but most of them use the 1st, 6th, and 7th stanzas of Longfellow’s poem in order to emphasize how despair and faith can exist side by side. Some versions of the song take on a classic, cheery-Christmas tone, as if the singer’s despair is barely felt. I get irrationally angry when I hear these happier versions. They do no justice to Longfellow’s suffering. To the suffering of the world. When I hear these versions, I grow weary and think, “Can’t I just have a moment of despair in December? Do I have to be happy all month long?”
John 16:33 is a comforting Bible verse: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
This verse is comforting because it promises peace, sure. But I think it’s even more comforting because it promises that Christ has overcome the troubles of this world. In other words, it doesn’t deny the grief we feel on this side of heaven (as some well-meaning Christmas songs tend to do). In fact, if you read the whole of John 16, you’ll see Jesus telling his disciples to expect grief over and over again. But then he draws them back to His ultimate plan: “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” (verse 22).
I have lost a few Christmases to grief. In those seasons, I listen to “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” and allow the mourning to rise up in me:
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, the swelling of the orchestra. The choir’s faithful, desperate proclamation (and my own):
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
In Longfellow’s poem, this is the 7th and final stanza. It is his solution to the dissonance of a painful world and a peaceful God who came to save it. It is his faith, written plainly. Written despite all hardship: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.”
Christ’s birth was just the beginning of His pain on earth. But the angels still proclaimed “Peace on earth, goodwill to men,” because they knew that God’s plan would not fail. This is the hope of Christmas: not that pain is obsolete, but that it will be one day.
There’s one more thing I like about the Casting Crowns arrangement, and the version I performed with my church choir all those years ago. It is an added chorus: one group tells a story of grief, while the other group proclaims “peace on earth” with a gentle, unyielding consistency. As if representing the consistent, gentle peace of God himself, speaking through the despair and questions of our hearts…
But the bells are ringing…
Like a choir they’re singing…
Does anybody hear them?...
And later on, the voices join together in one final, resonant chorus:
Do you hear the bells? They’re ringing...
[peace on earth]
Open up your heart and hear them...
[peace on earth]