This is one of those Christmas songs with multiple verses, like “Away in a Manger.” The first time I heard it was on one of the Christmas somg slection albums my father used to get free when he worked for Sears Roebuck in the Sixties. There were all sorts of strange selections on those records, like Mike Douglas singing “O Holy Night.” (He wasn’t bad, either.) Johnny Cash’s version of “I Heard the Bells” was on the same album as Mike, I think.

The song began as a poem by the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Do they still teach Henry’s poems in the schools? I bet not; I bet he’s a cancelled Great White Man now, and they teach Maya Angelou. Henry wrote a lot more memorable poems than Maya: “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Excelsior,” “The Song of Hiawatha,” “A Psalm of Life,” “The Village Blacksmith” “The Children’s Hour,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” and “The Arrow and the Song.” among others. Like other great American artists, it is Christmas that keeps his memory flickering, at least for those who know he wrote the words to “I Heard the Bells.”

The poet’s oldest son Charles, a lieutenant in the Union Army,  he was seriously wounded in November of 1863 during the Battle of New Hope Church. Longfellow had begged his only son not to enlist to fight the Rebels. When the terrible news arrived, the poet was still mourning the death of his second wife in a fire two years earlier.

Trying to control his grief on a Christmas he could not celebrate, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem titled “Christmas Bells” on December 25, 1863.  He wrote it for himself, and didn’t attempt to have the verses published until February 1865, after Charles had recovered; he may not have submitted it for publication if his son had died, we wouldn’t have the song today and Bing would have only recorded 129 different Christmas songs instead of 130.

Here’s all of “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.”

The poem is powerful, and the verses omitted in the musical version should be sung. As with “Do You Hear What I Hear?’, written during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the lyrics gain meaning by understanding the context in which they were written. In 1863, with the Civil War still raging and Longfellow’s son on the brink of death, it was far from certain that “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail.” The line was more than Christmas boilerplate; to Longfellow, it was a fervent hope.

The poem was first set to music in 1872  by the English organist, John Baptiste Calkin, who used a melody he had written 1848. There have been many musical arrangements since, but in 1956 composer Johnny Marks,  like Irving Berlin a Jew who composed great Christmas songs, added his version to the list.

Never heard of Johnny Marks? You should, for he has a legitimate claim to being the best Christmas songwriter of all time. Marks wrote “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and  Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run.”

And the music to  the version of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” that became the standard.

There’s a reason Bing Crosby has a claim to the “definitive” rendition of the song: he was the one who introduced the Marks melody.  He recorded it on October 3, 1956, using  verses 1, 2, 6, 7. It was released as a single, and was immediately hailed by reviewers.  “Bing Crosby’s workover of ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”  looks like a big one for the ’56 Yule and a hit potential of enduring value,” wrote one. The Marks version has since been covered by more than 60 artists.

I still like Johnny Cash’s version, though: