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I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day — Hope Surfaces from Despair

On Christmas day in 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was inspired to write the poem we now know as the Christmas carol, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. It was a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day was born out of Henry Wadsworth Longellow’s depression.

Longfellow had fallen into a depression in 1861 when his second wife Frances died. She had been sealing envelopes with hot wax when a flame caught her clothes on fire. Henry had rushed to her aid and tried to smother the flames. But by the time the fire was out, Frances had been burned beyond recovery.

She died the next day. Henry, burned badly as well, was too sick to attend her funeral.

The death marked a turning point in Longfellow’s life. His physical appearance changed dramatically as he began growing his beard because the burns disfigured his face. Mentally, he sank into depression.

Fanny Appleton Longfellow with sons Charley and Erny

Winning Frances’ affection had taken Longfellow years, and their 18-year marriage was the happiest time of his life. In the wake of her death, he spent much of his time translating other works and less on his own creation.

Christmas 1862

On Christmas day in 1862 he would record in his journal: “A merry Christmas’ say the children, but that is no more for me.” And even 18 years later he would still be mourning Frances’ loss, when he wrote The Cross of Snow:

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face–the face of one long dead–
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.

There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

In 1863, Longfellow suffered another blow. The poet was a staunch abolitionist, but he, like the entire country, was troubled by the Civil War. His son Charley in March of 1863 had decided that, regardless of his father’s wishes, he would join the fight. He ran off to Washington to enlist in the 1st Massachusetts Artillery.

Dear Papa

A friend posted a letter for him after he left:

Dear Papa

You know for how long a time I have been wanting to go to the war I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer, I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good God Bless you all. Yours affectionately

Charley.

Charley’s commanding officer soon discovered the boy’s influential family ties, and promoted Charley to lieutenant. Charley believed his aunt had probably helped procure the commission for him.

Charley Longfellow and friend, D.H.L. Gleason, 1863

Longfellow feared for his son’s future. In June, Charley came down with fever. Longfellow went to Washington and brought him back to spend summer on leave at the family cottage in Nahant, Mass.

Though committed to the fight, the romance of war was stripped away for Charley in the coming months of battles. In one letter home, he described seeing a fellow soldier lose his leg and other close calls:

“They may talk about the gaiety of a soldiers life but it strikes me as pretty earnest work when shells are ripping and tearing your men to pieces.”

In November, Charley’s own luck ran out. At New Hope, Va., his unit was engaged in a battle and he was shot. The bullet went through him from back to shoulder, just nicking his spine.

Again Longfellow had to travel to Washington to retrieve his son from the hospital. They arrived back at their Cambridge home on December 8, and a grim Longfellow set about the months-long process of trying to nurse his son back to health.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

The circumstances challenged his resolve, but he was inspired when he heard the bells. He found in them a message that peace would come again to the troubled nation. They inspired him to write the poem, Christmas Bells.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!”

Charley never did return to fight, despite his wish to. He was honorably discharged in February of 1864. Longfellow’s poem, published originally in a magazine, would be set to music in 1872, but with the middle stanzas often removed.

Charles Appleton Longfellow

To hear Burl Ives sing I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, click here.

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The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious cookies. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

This story about the carol, ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,’ was updated in 2022.

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The Revolutionary War Veterans Christmas Dinner in New Hampshire

Benjamin Pierce, a war hero and father of future president Franklin Pierce, threw a Christmas dinner for 21 Revolutionary War veterans in 1824.

Ammi Andrews of Ipswich, Mass., was the oldest guest at 89; the youngest was Nathaniel Johnson at 59.

(For a complete list of the attendees, click here.)

Pierce himself had just turned 67. Born Dec. 25, 1757, he was plowing a field on his uncle’s farm in Chelmsford, Mass., when he heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Pierce, 18, immediately enlisted. He fought at Bunker Hill and stood on Dorchester Heights to watch the British evacuate Boston. At the Battle of Saratoga, he earned a promotion for bravery.

After the war he moved to Hillsborough, N.H., where he prospered. In 1827, the people of New Hampshire elected him governor.

Revolutionary War Veterans Dinner

The visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to the United States on the country’s 50^th anniversary inspired Pierce to hold the dinner for Revolutionary War veterans.

He hosted it at the large tavern he owned, an ideal venue for eating, drinking and telling old war stories.

The old soldiers gathered at 11 a.m., and Pierce gave them an emotional welcome. They then elected Ammi Andrews and 83-year-old John McColley president and vice president of the day.

The Pierce Homestead, where Benjamin Pierce had a Christmas dinner for Revolutionary War veterans.

The Rev. John Lawton offered a prayer, and the veterans launched into their reminiscences. Ammi Andrews told a story about capturing a British sentinel during Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec.

At 1:30, they moved into the dining room and ate dinner while offering 13 toasts, one for each of the original states. The first nine toasts honored Washington, the war heroes and hard-won battles. The last four called for patriotism, liberty and the preservation of the union of the states. Twelve more toasts followed, praising the U.S. victory in the War of 1812, the Marquis de Lafayette and the Greeks fighting for liberty.

Earnest Patriotism

Benjamin Pierce, then a general in the New Hampshire militia, concluded the toast by remembering the war. He also praised God for preserving all present, and he thanked the Creator for allowing them ‘to see our beloved country so rapidly increase in population.” Pierce also gave thanks for ‘the progress of the arts and sciences of agriculture of commerce and manufactures.’

Pierce gave other dinners for Revolutionary War veterans. He was a discriminating host who didn’t invite just any veteran to his dinners. According to The Granite Monthly

His earnest patriotism was shown on the occasion of his inviting nineteen of his old Revolutionary compatriots (all residents of Hillsborough), to dinner on one of the anniversaries of a Continental triumph. This happened but a few years previous to his death. One of the veterans remarked the absence of one of their number who lived in the town, and mentioned the fact to the Governor, who said, “I invite no one to my table who is afraid of the smell of gunpowder.”

The dining room where the Revolutionary War veterans dined. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Postscript

Some Revolutionary War veterans lived long enough to have their photos taken. In 1864, the Rev. E.B. Hillard took on the mission of recording their memories and their images before they died.

Of those he tracked down, four came from New England. (None attended Pierce’s 1824 dinner.)

Samuel Downing

Samuel Downing of Newburyport, Mass., 102, served under Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Saratoga. He remembered Arnold as a bloody fellow, as brave a man as ever lived, stern, but kind to his men. “They didn’t treat him right,” Downing remembered. “But he ought to have been true.”

The Rev. Daniel Waldo

The Rev. Daniel Waldo, born in Windham, Conn. The army drafted him at 16 and a year later the British took him prisoner. At the age of 94, the U.S. House of Representatives appointed him chaplain. At 101, he advised people to eat little and control the temper.

Lemuel Cook

Lemuel Cook, 105, of Northbury, Conn., fought at the Battle of Brandywine and the siege of Yorktown. There they had little to eat, but plenty of flies. He remembered Washington ordering them not to laugh at the British because it was bad enough to surrender without being insulted.

William Hutchings

William Hutchings, 102, of York, Maine, enlisted at the age of 15. The British took him prisoner at Castine during the Penobscot Expedition, but released him because of his young age.

This story about the Revolutionary War veterans Christmas dinner was updated in 2022.

Images: Pierce Homestead By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20697770.

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We Won’t Go Until We Get Some: New England Colonial Christmas Traditions

Just how rowdy was a New England colonial Christmas? It depended on who was celebrating. But it bore little resemblance to Christmas today, and New Englanders found it a touchy subject from the start.

Illustration of Gov. William Bradford putting down the Christmas revels in the earliest days of Massachusetts. (Howard Pyle)

Illustration of an early New England colonial Christmas tradition: Plymouth Gov. William Bradford putting down the Christmas revels. (Howard Pyle)

The Pilgrims who arrived in Plymouth were a mix of people. They were led by separatists who despised the Christmas traditions of the Anglican Church as well as the Roman Catholic Church. They wanted to establish their own protestant churches, free of Christmas.

But many of the Pilgrims did not come to America for religious reasons at all. They were craftsmen or farmers recruited to ensure the colony would survive, and they simply wanted to make a better life in America.

New England Colonial Christmas

On their first Christmas at Plymouth, the Pilgrims celebrated the best way they knew how: They worked right through it. By the next year, Christmas traditions began infiltrating the group, and Gov. William Bradford had to put down the celebrations. He went so far as to call the Christmas treat mincemeat pie ‘idolatrie in a crust.’

As the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gained ascendance, they had plenty of disagreements with the Pilgrims in Plymouth. But they largely agreed in their dislike of Christmas.

There remained in their midst, however, people who did celebrate Christmas with gusto. The fishing communities especially embraced the New England colonial Christmas, with their less-literate members mostly celebrating the holiday. Much of what actually happened was never recorded. What was recorded was seen through the eyes of the Puritan theocracy, and they painted an ugly picture of Christmas indeed.

Paganism

The Puritans complained that Christmas arose from an unnatural ideological marriage between the Roman Catholic Church and the pagans. They thought it originated in the Roman festival Saturnalia.

Just how pagan is Christmas? We won’t try to settle that debate. But the New England colonial Christmas increasingly irritated the Puritans, and they decided to stomp it out.

In 1647, the reformers in England outlawed Christmas. And the Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut soon followed suit. People who celebrated Christmas would be subject to a fine of five shillings.

In 1662, a Beverly, Mass., man found himself in court for hosting a drunken gathering on Christmas Day. He was a troublemaker whose family frequently tangled with Puritan society. His wife would eventually die on the gallows, but that’s another story.

More Mayhem

A second glimpse of Christmas mayhem occurred on Christmas Day in 1679 in Salem, Mass. Joseph Foster, Benjamin Fuller, Samuel Brayebrooke and Joseph Flint decided they wanted some booze for the holiday. They knew 72-year-old John Rowden had made perry, a liquor made from pears. So they dropped in to pay him an unscheduled visit.

Rowden told them to get out. Fuller refused, saying, “it was Christmas Day at night and they came to be merry and to drink perry, which was not to be had anywhere else but here and perry they would have before they went,” according to court records. The encounter ended in a fight and stolen property.

Twelfth Night (The King Drinks), by David Teniers the Younger (1634-1640), foreshadowing the New England colonial Christmas.

Drinking was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Christmas debauchery. The New England colonial Christmas included wassailing, mumming, gambling and feasting.

The Puritans constantly struggled to keep Christmas under control. The hoi polloi embraced the New England colonial Christmas as quite a good time.

With the harvest over, the cupboards full and the long winter yet to come, December seemed a perfect month for a ripping good celebration.

Lord of Misrule

In England and elsewhere in the colonies, towns would appoint a “lord of misrule.” This custom borrowed from Saturnalia as well. Generally the towns appointed someone of lower standing to this role to serve as master of ceremonies of the Christmas celebration either up to or including the Twelfth Night festivities.

The reason? During the New England colonial Christmas, people reversed their roles and the poor ruled over the wealthy. In addition to the feasting and drunkenness, the more outgoing celebrants used the holiday as an excuse for wassailing. Wassailing involved barging into the houses of the wealthier citizens, singing a song or two or putting on a short skit, and demanding food, drink and money.

Figgy Pudding

Perhaps you’ve sung the Christmas carol, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, with its chorus of “Oh, bring us a figgy pudding…we won’t go until we get some.” They meant it.

Figgy pudding with flaming brandy

The more obliging citizens would fork over the goods. Others, however, declined — resulting in fights, rock-throwing and hard feelings. Even more abhorrent to the Puritans was the sexual promiscuity that accompanied Christmas. Celebrants cast aside their inhibitions.

One of the more colorful New England colonial Christmas traditions was mumming, in which men dressed like women (and vice versa) or simply disguised themselves in a range of costumes. Mumming could be as innocent as street theater or as bawdy as a loosely disguised roving orgy.

The Puritan objected to the custom because a person disguised could slip into a neighbor’s house for an assignation without raising eyebrows. How commonplace was the debauchery? It’s probably impossible to say, though the good Puritans wanted nothing to do with it.

In 1681, with the Civil War over in England, the crown began pressuring Massachusetts to embrace the Anglican Church and roll back Puritan reforms. The colony complied by repealing the laws against Christmas. But the holiday remained frowned upon.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Mad Mirth

In 1687 the Puritan minister Increase Mather railed against Christmas. He declared that those who celebrated it “are consumed in compotations, in interludes, in playing at cards, in revellings, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.”

No one really disagreed. It just didn’t bother some people the way it did Mather and the Puritan leadership.

It would take more than 100 years for Christmas to develop the wholesome, twinkly veneer it has today. While the southern colonies and New York, with its Dutch roots, embraced Christmas earlier, New England Protestants would hold out well beyond 1800.

The rest of the nation also felt the influence of the New England colonial Christmas tradition. In 1789, for instance, Congress held a session on Christmas Day. Businesses throughout New England always opened on Christmas. And children attended school on Christmas well into the 1800s.

The New England Colonial Christmas Gets a Facelift

By the early 1800s, however, with Episcopalians and Catholics already celebrating Christmas, the holdout Protestants felt pushed to join in. Most, though, still considered Christmas a pagan holiday that the Catholic Church had co-opted for its own purposes.

The holiday got a facelift with the poem Twas The Night Before Christmas, published in 1822. and Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol in 1843. The opposition in the church then began to relent.

Marley’s Ghost, from A Christmas Carol. Original illustration by John Leech from the 1843 edition

After the Civil War, the battle ended. New England joined the rest of the country in embracing Christmas. And Christmas, by the way, embraced New England values, at least to some degree. The over-the-top debauchery and drunkenness gave way once and for all to the quieter, conventional celebrations we know today.

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The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

To read more about the history of New England colonial Christmas, you may want to read The Battle for Christmas, by Stephen Nissenbaum.

This story about New England colonial Christmas traditions was updated in 2022.

Images: Figgy pudding By Ted Kerwin – originally posted to Flickr as Figgy Pudding with Flaming Brandy, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7162734. Twelfth Night by David Teniers By David Teniers the Younger – PradoWeb Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15885934.

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New England Christmas Sayings and Superstitions

To celebrate Christmas, we bring you some Christmas sayings and superstitions about the holiday from What They Say in New England, by Clifton Johnson in 1896.

Johnson, born in 1865 in Hadley, Mass., wrote 125 books published during his lifetime despite receiving little formal education. He also illustrated and photographed his books.

Among his many interests were traditional New England sayings and folklore. He collected several about Christmas.

Christmas card courtesy Boston Public Library.

Here they are:

When the clock strikes midnight before Christmas the cows kneel in their stalls.

Some young girls in Hadley, years ago, sat up to discover whether this was true or not. At midnight they went out to the barn, and sure enough when the hour struck the cows knelt. At any rate, the girls said it happened.

A still older story told in the town is that at midnight when Christmas Day begins, all the cattle in the yards and fields kneel with their heads turned to the east in adoration. Two girls of the olden time, eager to see for themselves the truth of the tale, sat up on Christmas Eve until the spellbound hour. Then they visited the farm’s cattleyard. But the cattle made no sign that they were at all affected.

Cold Morning by Currier & Ives. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Christmas Sayings

Half the pork and half the hay
On Christmas Day.

Back in the day, the men would spend a part of Christmas Day making a tour of the neighbors to see how their hay was holding out.

A green Christmas makes a full churchyard.

The reason? Winters with constant freezings and thawings are very unhealthy. Therefore they fill the graveyard.

The twelve days of Christmas indicate the weather for the following year.

Each day in order shows the weather for one month.

If the sun shines through the limbs of the apple-trees on Christmas Day, there will be a good crop of fruit next year.

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