I heard the bells on Christmas Day

I heard the bells on Christmas Day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow* (1807-1882). A version of this hymn, ‘Christmas Bells’, was written on 25 December 1864 during the Civil War, as a response to the news that his son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, had been wounded fighting for the Union side (Longfellow himself was a strong supporter of abolition). It was published in February 1865 in Our Young Folks, a magazine for young people published by Ticknor and Fields in Boston, and in Household Poems (1865), followed by Longfellow’s Flower-de-Luce (also Ticknor and Fields, Boston, 1866). It is an unusual Christmas hymn, with a strong Unitarian ‘feel’ to it, celebrating the ultimate victory of good over...