Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Everyone!

Merry Christmas Day! Icy weather in Seattle unexpectedly finds me in Denver with my immediate family, but my thoughts are also with friends and family at home around the various nooks and crannies of Puget Sound, and with the Obama family on holiday in Hawaii. I hope he is getting the rest that he needs and time with his family that he deserves!

"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" is my absolute favorite Christmas song. Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a poem during the American Civil War and set to music later, its message is profoundly hopeful in the face of horrific war. It inspired me several years ago to make this music video with images of 9/11 intermingled with bells of many religions, angels, and symbols of a peaceful world.

Written 144 years ago during another period of great national trauma, Longfellow's beautiful words capture the hope and promise the Obama victory gives to so many people in the United States and around the globe.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(stanzas 2, 4 & 5 are usually omitted in the song version)

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play

And mild and sweet the words repeat,

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had roll'd along th' unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bow'd 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 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.

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.

"'Til 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.