December 24: Merry Christmas, and listen to those bells…

In which, we continue a TTP tradition of reflecting on an ever true Christmas poem.

It’s time for that TTP Christmas tradition of sharing with you my reflection on Longfellow’s classic poem turned carol, “Christmas Bells.”

Prelude

I first began sharing this poem and my reflections on it at a time when several people I knew had been going through seasons of pain and loss around Christmas. As I’ve gone through my own seasons of pain and loss, the words Longfellow wrote, and I shared, to minister to others I now find minister to my own soul too. So, I share them here every Christmas in lieu of my regular recap of the week in the hopes that wherever you may be this Christmas (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually), you may be comforted anew by the beauty of Christmas and its promise of “peace on earth and goodwill to men.”

Thank you so much for the time, support, and attention you gift to me by reading this publication so faithfully. Merry Christmas!

This Christmas…

It’s been a crazy year, and it seems that one tragedy after another has dominated the news headlines. As observers of world affairs, well versed in current events (in addition to being stressed out over happenings in our own lives) I think it can be easy to fall to the temptation that Christmas can be contrived, divorced from reality, or “humbug” to use Scrooge’s term.

The season is universally portrayed as a time for happiness, warm fuzzies, and other phrases to describe positive feels. However, for many, including myself this month, it’s a season in which it’s difficult to enjoy the cheer when preoccupied with pain, suffering, or just the general scrum of life.

Being someone immersed in the observation and study of political conflict, it’s not just the dangers abroad, but the dangers at home that crowd out a sense of peace on earth. It’s not just American polarization, it’s feeling overwhelmed at its vehemence and the cynicism that threatens to cool any goodwill I feel towards my neighbor.

When we reach Christmas and the end of the year, we’re often asked to reflect on the year when all we want to do is lay the dang thing to rest.

If you’re in that place, or tempted to be in that place as I often am, I want to wish you a very “Merry Christmas,” because it’s for a future hope in a broken world that we celebrate such a wonderful holiday.

Encapsulated in the birth of Jesus we find the hope of redemption, the invitation to meet it, the joy at finding it, and the love that results from it that gives us cause for celebration - especially when downcast and overcome with suffering in the world, or in our own personal lives.

The message of “Christmas Bells”

Have you read/sung/heard of the Longfellow poem “Christmas Bells”?

Its background story is worth noting. On Christmas Day in 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sat in his home in Massachusetts grieving the loss of his wife who had tragically died two years earlier, and the wounding of his son in the American Civil War.

If anyone had reason to doubt the Christmas story and its message, Longfellow did that Christmas. Even as he was suffering from personal grief, the nation was tearing itself apart in the deadliest conflict in American history. Within and without, death, destruction and injustice seemed to surround Longfellow.

As he put pen to paper, he gave voice to his internal wrestling with grief, doubt, and despair:

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 I, 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!"

We’re five stanzas in and one can feel Longfellow circling down into a whirlpool of despair. But, then, there’s a turn. Something in the sounds of the bells he hears reaches deeper than his anguish and touches his soul, enlivening his faith, and rekindling his hope:

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."

“God is not dead.” God's very name, I AM, a declaration of life and power.

“God is not dead.” The very words of Jesus in the gospels (“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”).

Longfellow’s poem pleads for upturned eyes and hearts at Christmas time, because Jesus is more than just “the reason for the season,” He is the promise of the season: a promise of good over evil, of peace and love triumphant.

It’s not a message that goes away in the face of evil, but calls louder for our attention. It is a light that shines brighter as encroaching clouds grow darker.

So have a “Merry Christmas” this year, even if it comes with tears and longings. For in Christmas we find fresh cause to be reminded of, and renewed in, the Christmas message of God coming down to humanity and taking on humanity in the form of a small child: "Peace on earth, good-will to men."

In the words of Linus Van Pelt, “That’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”

Postlude

And if you’d like a classic musical rendition of this poem, here’s the King of Christmas Croon, Bing Crosby:

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