Newtown, Longfellow and Christmas

On Friday, a young man in Newtown, Connecticut, shot his mother, leaving her dead. Then he took his mother's guns and proceeded to Sandy Hook Elementary School where she had worked and shot and killed 20 young students and 6 adults. Finally, he turned the gun on himself.

A shocked nation reacted with increasing anguish over a weekend of non-stop news coverage. And this week, each day, there are multiple funeral services with undersized coffins and grieving parents who will never get to see their precious innocent children bloom into firemen and teachers and business owners and pastors and parents themselves.

Perhaps making the grief more severe is the fact that we are so close to Christmas. The holiday that promises to lift our spirits and to help us bond to our extended families. Most of us feel compassion and empathy for the families for whom the season will probably just be a reminder of what they are missing.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the greatest American poets, experienced incredible pain in his life. His first wife died when he was young, leaving him to grieve for the next seven years. His next wife bore him five children. But in 1861, she was tragically burned to death. Longfellow hated the Civil War that followed shortly thereafter. His oldest son enlisted and was seriously wounded in battle and sent home to recover.

Tending to his son's injuries and seeing so many other wounded soldiers, he began to anguish over the tragedy of the war. It was on Christmas Day, 1863, that he listened to the church bells of Cambridge ringing. He asked the question, "Where is the promise of 'Peace on earth' that was announced by the angels on the first Christmas?"

And so he wrote a wonderful poem that explored that very question. In the midst of National grief, violence and tragedy, where is the peace that God promised? When it was set to music almost ten years later, it was hugely popular in both America and Europe (omitting the 4th and 5th verses specific to the Civil War--but included here):

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th'unbroken song
Of peace on earth, goodwill 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, goodwill 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, goodwill 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, goodwill 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, goodwill 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, goodwill to men!

No matter what you encounter during this season, "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, so--Peace on Earth; Goodwill to Men!"