Peace on Earth Good Will to Men

When I was in third grade, I had to memorize a poem for the first time and recite it in front of my entire class. I was a nervous wreck. I could barely remember the words. I had spent the evening before trying to memorize them but as I stood in front of my class- skinny, shaking, and pale as a ghost- they could only come out in a jittery stutter:

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.

But as my voice warmed up I began to say them with just a little more force, my mind hearing the rhythm, feeling the cadence, and forgetting the people around me I let go:

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.

At the time, I didn’t really connect with the poem. They were just these pretty but hollow words that rolled off the tongue in natural iambic pentameter. I guess I just didn’t get it. I thought Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was just about the silliest name I had ever come across and the Civil war was just so long ago. Frankly, I didn’t see what he was whining about.

I didn’t think about the song again until we played it in band. It was 2001, my Senior year in High School. One September morning we were in the middle of rehearsing a pretty arrangement of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”, when  a kid ran through the door just as the music was swelling. He was pale, his voice was shaking. He barely got the words out: “Turn on the TV! Something is happening!”   

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.

Something was happening. I watched in panic as the plane flew into the second tower, then in horror as they both collapsed- bodies falling like snow flakes from out of the windows. “Jesus Christ” someone behind me said. The words echoed in my own heart.

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.

In the coming months and years we would rally behind our country and against our enemies. We were angry, confused, and most of all afraid. Our leaders were with us. We toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan and embarked on a war with Iraq, the end of which we’ve not yet seen. With this new awareness of a world of hatred and violence, my adolescence officially ended. I was introduced for the first time to a world of darkness. It was as if all of the sudden the candle of innocence that I had carried so long was snuffed out by a sudden and unexpected wind.

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.”

But of course that isn’t the end of the story.

Even now, I get chills when I hear the song because within it is a deep truth. Martin Luther King said that “the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice”. He was living in dark times too. Just like me and Longfellow. But it is in times of darkness we most need to believe in the light. Our ages have been filled with hours of darkness and the God of history has always brought us through.

1^st Century Palestine was certainly an age of darkness. An oppressed people trying desperately to practice their religion under the thumb of a ruthless despot known for his paranoia and his short temper, constant terrorist attacks in the Temple and the marketplaces leading to police retaliation against the people, and widespread disease and poverty. Strange cults emerged announcing the end of the world, attracting large followings because they offered a shred of hope in a time that was otherwise an abyss of darkness.

Into this scene came a stable, a manger, a crying child and the enduring promise of peace on earth good will toward 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 manger child means that the world is never too dark for love and compassion to win the ultimate victory. Out of the ashes of the deepest failures of humanity, new life can be born. Longfellow’s contemporary, Walt Whitman said: “Roaming in thought over the universe, I saw the little that is good steadily hastening toward immortality, And the vast all that is called evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.” The manger child means that as long as there is just an once of light in this world the bells will still ring, tolling , thundering through an age of darkness…

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.

I’d like to say they all stood up and whistled and cheered. I’d like to say I got a standing ovation. But it just didn’t happen that way.

As I finished the poem before my class, my voice was still shaking and everyone clapped politely. I took my seat and Emily Rogers stood up to read Robert Frost. I smiled. I had gotten through the entire thing and I hadn’t forgotten a single word of it. I hope I never do.