The story behind I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day is a Christmas poem before it is a carol. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote it in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Christmas Day 1863, and titled it Christmas Bells. The first line became the common name only after musicians set the words. The poem is public domain. A popular melody written in 1956 by Johnny Marks is a separate piece, and this page does not reprint his song lyric.
The arc is plain and hard. Church bells repeat the old line of peace on earth, good will to men. The poet thinks of every belfry in Christendom rolling the same song. Then the Civil War answers with cannon, and he bows his head. The last stanza does not pretend the war is over. It answers despair with a deeper peal: God is not dead, and the wrong shall fail.
History and origins
Longfellow wrote out of two griefs, not out of a seasonal commission. On July 9, 1861, his wife Frances, called Fanny, was sealing locks of the children's hair with hot wax when her dress caught fire. He tried to smother the flames and was badly burned himself. She died the next day. He was still mourning her when the war took his oldest son. Charles Appleton Longfellow had enlisted in the Union army in 1863 without his father's blessing. On November 27, at the Mine Run campaign in Virginia, a bullet passed through Charles's shoulder and grazed his spine. A telegram reached the family table on December 1. Longfellow traveled to Washington to find his son alive and, in time, able to recover, though Charles's soldiering was finished.
Christmas Day 1863 was less than a month after that telegram. The poem's seven stanzas move in the order of that morning: familiar carols, a thought of all Christendom, a chant of peace, then the black mouth of cannon in the South, then an image of the continent cracked like a hearth, then the spoken sentence that there is no peace, then the bells pealing louder than the despair. He did not publish it that week. It appeared in February 1865 in Our Young Folks, a magazine for young readers issued by Ticknor and Fields, and it was collected in Flower de Luce in 1867. The war was not yet over when the magazine printing appeared. The hope in the last stanza was not hindsight after Appomattox.
The words waited a few years for the tune that churches still call the standard. The English organist John Baptiste Calkin paired the poem with his melody Waltham in 1872. He had used that tune earlier for other texts. Waltham is serious, almost processional, and it can carry the war stanzas without winking. American hymnals often dropped the two stanzas about the cannon and the earthquake. The shortened hymn keeps despair and the answering peal, but it hides the specific war. Readers who know only the four stanza carol sometimes think the darkness is a vague mood. The 1863 text is about a named conflict and a named household.
Other settings exist and should stay distinct. Joseph Mainzer's tune has been used. Harriet P. Sawyer wrote a setting. In 1956 Johnny Marks, already famous for Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, composed a new melody. Bing Crosby recorded that version the same year, and it became the song many radio listeners mean by the title. Marks's music is under its own copyright. His text follows Longfellow in places and is still not a license to treat the 1956 song as public domain. This index quotes the 1863 poem, including the stanzas hymnals skip, and points to Crosby as a performer of a different musical work.
Full lyrics
Stanza 1
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.
Stanza 2
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.
Stanza 3
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.
Stanza 4
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.
Stanza 5
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.
Stanza 6
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.
Stanza 7
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.
The text above follows a standard public domain version. Singers will meet small changes from book to book, especially in folk carols.
Lyrics presented for educational and personal use. Sing along responsibly this holiday season!
Meaning and symbolism
The bells are doing the work that bells do in a town: they mark sacred time with a sentence everyone is supposed to know. Longfellow's sentence is the angels' line from Luke, peace on earth, good will to men. He lets that sentence travel around the world in one stanza, from belfry to belfry, an unbroken song. Then he lets history interrupt it. Hate is strong and mocks the song is not a rejection of Christmas. It is a refusal to sing the angels' line as if Gettysburg and a wounded son had not happened. The poem's courage is that the interruption stays on the page.
The reply is not an argument so much as a louder bell. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep, takes aim at the fear that providence has abandoned the country. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, is a moral claim, not a casualty report. Longfellow does not say the Union has already won, and he does not say personal grief is cured. Fanny is not named. Charles is not named. The hearth stones of a continent are the public form of a private ruin. Readers in 1865 would have felt the war. Readers now can feel any season when public violence mocks a liturgy of peace. The poem earns its last line by surviving its own rebuttal.
Fun facts and statistics
- Longfellow wrote the poem Christmas Bells on Christmas Day 1863 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- His wife Fanny died in July 1861 after her dress caught fire.
- His son Charles was badly wounded on November 27, 1863, during the Mine Run campaign.
- The poem was first printed in February 1865 in the magazine Our Young Folks.
- John Baptiste Calkin joined the words to his tune Waltham in 1872.
- Many hymnals omit the two stanzas about cannon in the South and a continent torn apart.
- Johnny Marks wrote a different melody in 1956, recorded that year by Bing Crosby.
- The 1863 poem is public domain. The Marks song lyric is not the text printed here.
Top 5 most popular renditions
Our Young Folks
1865
The first public rendition was a printed one. In February 1865 Ticknor and Fields published Christmas Bells in Our Young Folks, a magazine aimed at young readers, while the Civil War was still being fought. Families met the seven stanzas as a poem, not as a hymn with an organ introduction. That order matters. The cannon and the torn continent were part of the original gift to readers. Only later did songbooks decide that children, or congregations, should be spared the war. The magazine text is the baseline for every later cut.
Our Young Folks
John Baptiste Calkin
1872
Calkin, an English organist, set the poem to Waltham in 1872 and gave the churches the melody that remained standard for decades. Waltham moves in a steady four and can support a procession or a seated hymn. Because Calkin was writing hymnody, editors soon felt free to choose stanzas. The tune itself does not require the cuts. It can carry hate is strong as well as it carries the final peal. Anyone who learns the carol in a traditional hymnal is probably learning Waltham, whether or not the page names Calkin.
John Baptiste Calkin
Bing Crosby
1956
Bing Crosby recorded I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day in 1956 to the new melody by Johnny Marks. The recording placed Longfellow's Christmas despair inside Crosby's calm radio voice and sent it through the same season that already associated Crosby with popular Christmas song. This is the version many people hum. It is not Calkin's hymn and it is not a license to reproduce the Marks lyric as folk poetry. Credit the singer, the songwriter, and the poet as three different makers, and let the 1863 stanzas stand when the aim is the poem.
Bing Crosby
Tabernacle Choir
20th century
The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, long called the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, kept the Calkin hymn in Christmas broadcasts and recordings through the twentieth century. Massed voices and organ suit Waltham's processional stride and the picture of belfries rolling a song across Christendom. Broadcast caroling taught listeners the shortened church text more often than the magazine poem. Even so, the choir's weight on God is not dead gave the last stanza a public grandeur that recital singers sometimes miss. The rendition belongs to American hymn tradition, not to the 1956 pop melody.
Tabernacle Choir
Sarah McLachlan
2006
Sarah McLachlan sang the carol on her 2006 album Wintersong, in the line of popular artists who inherit the piece through the Marks era rather than through a pew hymnal. A solo voice and a contemporary arrangement move the despair stanza close to the microphone. That intimacy fits a poem born in a private house as well as in a national war. Listeners who arrive from this recording can be pointed back to the two stanzas about cannon and hearth stones, which pop sets often leave aside. The poem is larger than any one track.
Sarah McLachlan
Sheet music
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Notes for singers
If you place I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day in a December service, a school program, or a living room sing, teach Waltham before you add harmony. A confident melody lets guests enter on the refrain. Say the names when you introduce it. The words are credited to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the music to John Baptiste Calkin. The year to remember is 1863, and the place to name is Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This sits in the library as a hymn. Let that tradition set the tempo. A lullaby loses its point if it is hurried. A dance carol loses its point if every syllable is precious. Leave a breath at the end of the verse so the next line feels chosen rather than chased.
Longfellow wrote the poem Christmas Bells on Christmas Day 1863 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hold that fact in the introduction you speak, not only in a program note. His wife Fanny died in July 1861 after her dress caught fire. Those two details give a listener a reason to hear the song as a made thing, not as wallpaper.
When the group is small, one voice can carry the verse and everyone can take the refrain. When the group is a choir, decide in advance whether you are telling a story or painting a picture. Story songs want clear words. Picture songs can bloom. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day will tell you which it is after a single unaccompanied read through.
Questions readers ask
Fanny Longfellow died in July 1861 from burns after her dress caught fire. In November 1863 their son Charles was shot through the shoulder at Mine Run, and the telegram arrived on December 1. Longfellow wrote Christmas Bells on December 25, 1863. The poem does not name them, but the despair and the torn hearth are not a general seasonal pose.
The fourth and fifth stanzas name cannon in the South and a continent split by violence. Editors who wanted a general Christmas hymn often removed those lines and kept the despair and the final peal. The cut makes the carol easier to reuse in peacetime and hides the Civil War. The poem's own order includes the guns before the hope.
There is no melody from 1863. Calkin's Waltham, set in 1872, became the usual church tune. Johnny Marks wrote a different popular melody in 1956, which Bing Crosby recorded. Both are heard today. The Marks song is a separate copyrighted work. This page prints Longfellow's public domain poem, not the Marks lyric.
No. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, is a belief about God's justice, spoken while the war continues. The poem was published in February 1865, before the surrender. It answers the line that hate mocks the song. It does not offer a battle report or a claim that private grief has been canceled.
Why this song endures
The poem lasts because it allows a believer to say that the Christmas sentence sounds false, and it does not end there. Many seasonal songs either ignore suffering or dissolve it in fog. Longfellow writes the mockery in the poet's own voice and then gives the bells the last speech. Communities in wartime, and households in private grief, recognize that order. The last stanza is memorizable, which matters. A line people can say back to themselves is a line that outlives the service.
It also lasts because two musical traditions keep refreshing it without agreeing with each other. Church musicians guard Waltham and the hymnal text. Popular singers guard the 1956 melody and a radio memory. The friction sends curious listeners back to December 25, 1863, and to the magazine of February 1865. As long as someone reprints the cannon and the hearth stones, the carol cannot collapse into vague comfort. The hope is famous only because the despair is specific.