Most people sing “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” as if it were a peaceful, gentle Christmas carol. But if you know the backstory, it was not written in peace. It was written from a place of grief and loss, by a man who had just buried his wife, had nearly lost his son, and was watching his nation tear itself apart in the Civil War. And yet the song ends with one of the strongest declarations ever put to music: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.” That line came out of a great trial; it was really fought for. So today I want to show you why that matters. If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. Every Christmas I love looking at familiar songs and asking, “What is the story behind that song? Why was that Christmas carol written?” So today I want to walk through the true story behind “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” along with a booklet we have put together that goes with the story. Sight & Sound has put together a movie on this. I have not seen it myself, but I have heard great things about it. It is the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the story of the song is about how God carried a man through really the darkest season of his life. Here is where we are going in the video. First I want to look at the tragedy behind the song, then the lowest point of the poem he wrote that day, then the actual answer the song proclaims, and then why the gospel message of Christmas is a message of hope.
The Tragedy Behind the Song
Let us start at the beginning. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is remembered today as a great poet, but in the early 1860s he was a broken man. In July 1861, his wife Fanny was sealing keepsakes for her children by candlelight when a spark caught her dress on fire, and within moments she was engulfed in flames. She rushed to where Longfellow was taking a nap. He saw his wife in flames, grabbed a rug, wrapped her in it, and threw himself on top of her, the flames hitting his face and hands, trying desperately to smother the fire with his own body. But he ultimately failed. By the morning she was gone. Longfellow survived, but his face was burned and scarred, and he grew a beard for the rest of his life to hide the scars. But there are deeper wounds than the scars on a face. He had lost his wife, and now he was the father of six children all on his own. In his journal, that first Christmas without her, he wrote, “How inexpressibly sad are all holidays.” That is where this song is coming from. But the sorrow did not stop there; there was grief upon grief. The Civil War was raging, and it hit Longfellow’s home when his oldest son rushed off to battle without his father’s blessing, without telling his father. Eventually he did give his blessing. But his oldest son, Charles, seventeen years old, enlisted, saying, “I feel it my duty to do what I can for my country.” Just a few months later, on December 1st, 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow received a telegram saying his son Charles had been shot in battle. The bullet had entered his shoulder and passed dangerously close to his spine, nearly shattering his shoulder and taking away the mobility of his whole arm. The surgeon said an inch’s difference would have killed him. Longfellow rushed to Washington, found his son, and brought him home. Charles survived, but the recovery would be a long, uncertain grind. So now Longfellow was a widower, a caregiver, a grieving father, and a man watching his country tear itself apart.
The Lowest Point
This is the man who sat down on Christmas morning and heard the bells chiming. There was no peace on earth. On Christmas morning, the snow lay over Cambridge, and the house was quiet. He was there in his study and did not want to write, but in the very house where his wife had died he heard the Christmas bells, the churches ringing outside. The church bells rang across the city, and they brought this old, familiar message to his mind. The Christmas message is supposedly “peace on earth, good will toward men,” but Longfellow was thinking, “Peace on earth? How could this be?” You know the phrase in the song: “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.'” This is the lowest point of the whole song, of that poem. And if you are honest, maybe you have felt like that at Christmas. Loss is sometimes amplified by the holiday. Grief is amplified because loved ones who used to be there are no longer there. The pain is there, and the fun everyone else seems to be having reminds you of it. In writing this song, Longfellow is not pretending anything. He just says plainly, “Hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth.” That feels true for many people. The Christmas bells are saying “peace on earth,” and yet our experience is saying, “Well, I do not sense any peace.”
God Is Not Dead, nor Doth He Sleep
But here is the turning point of the song. Longfellow is in the middle of despair, going through legitimate pain, and he does not deny the pain, but it is as if the bells grow louder and louder. The song says, “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,” and the greatest point of the song is this: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.” That line, “God is not dead,” is not a denial of the pain and sorrow and grief and all the suffering that has gone on. It is a recognition that in the middle of all this sorrow, God has not left the world. God has not lost the battle. He has not lost control. He has not abandoned justice. He is not leaving this out there for us to figure out on our own. Even when peace feels absent, God is still there; He is still present with us. That is not just optimism, a better-hope-so kind of thing. It is a conviction God gives us through Jesus Christ, and that is the deeper message of Christmas. There is no indication that Longfellow himself was a believer. His religion denied the miraculous nature of the Scriptures and the divinity of Jesus Christ, so I am not convinced he was a Christian. And yet the message of his song is actually true: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.” The things he wrote about are absolutely true, and we can take them a step further through Jesus Christ. The message of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” is not just sentimentality or emotionalism, a pie-in-the-sky idea that hopefully everything gets better one day. No, that kind of peace comes through the gospel. It is a gospel peace.
The Gospel Peace
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Christmas is about a God who comes to meet us in our sorrow. He is not outside of it. He came as a man to enter into the griefs we endure. He suffered all the same things we suffer. He was tempted as we are tempted, yet without sin. The Bible is honest about the problems we face, and it knows that all our problems come from sin. The Bible says in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Isaiah 59:2 says, “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God.” This world is wrecked by ruin and sin, and there are wars. The verses of his song about the Civil War are left out of most of our hymnals today, but he writes about the cannons thundering and drowning out this message of peace. That is why peace feels so elusive: sin breaks that peace. Sin is what has fractured this world. Sin brings death. The Bible says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death,” but that verse does not stop there. It continues: “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Ultimately, that is the message the Christmas bells were ringing out that day: Christ died for you. The peace of Christmas comes in Romans 5:8: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We brought the brokenness, but Christ died for us. 1 Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Jesus did not come just to comfort us. He came to save us. He was buried and rose again from the grave. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 declares the gospel to us: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” That is the message of the Christmas bells. That is what the bells can say: the resurrection guarantees that the wrong shall fail and the right prevail. That is a gift Jesus Christ offers us. Salvation is not earned by good deeds, by effort, or by religion. The Scriptures teach in Romans 10:13, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Acts 16:31 says, “And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Peace with God where there was once enmity is a gift that comes through repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ; Acts 20:21 says, “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” That is the peace the Christmas bells proclaim.
So hear those bells. Longfellow’s life was not easy. It was shattered by sin and the ruin that comes from sin. His life did not suddenly become easy. The war continued. His losses remained. But where he landed was correct. The statements he made about God were absolutely correct: God is not dead. God is not asleep. God is going to make all these wrong things right. So if this Christmas you are feeling sorrow instead of joy, if you are reminded more of the loss than of the joy of this season, if it seems like this whole message of peace is being drowned out by all the issues going on, I hope you can hear the Christmas bells in a new way today. It is as if those Christmas bells are still ringing, still telling you the truth: God is not dead. He is not asleep. Jesus has died for sin. He has died to make all the wrong things right. That is what it is all about this Christmas season. I hope you enjoyed the Christmas season. This is posting many weeks after Christmas, but I hope the message is still ringing true in your ears. God bless you, and we will see you in the next video.
