Merry Christmas!

In celebration of the Christmas season, the Rotary Club of Edmond will not meet again until Wednesday, January 4, 2012. I hope your holiday is a joyous time.

It was not always so in American history. A century and a half ago, our nation was in the throes of a bloody Civil War. On Christmas Day, 1863, it seemed to many that the war might not end at all. Virtually every community, every family felt the direct effects of the war. Thousands upon thousand had already died, sometimes in a single day, and thousands more would follow. Six months earlier, at the Battle of Gettysburg, the two sides suffered casualties reaching up to 50,000.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was despondent. A couple years earlier, he had lost his wife  in a tragic fire. And just recently, he had learned that his son, who insisted on joining the Union’s military effort, had been wounded.

Yet, as he heard the church bells of Cambridge, Massachusetts, that day, Longfellow became inspired to write a poem. Later set to music, the poem became known as “Christmas Bells”. I have reproduced it here in its entirety.

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!"

I hope you have a merry Christmas!

Andy