A Christmas Carol Written Between the Wars

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“It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold.”


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Edmund Hamilton Sears (Lyrics) & Richard Storrs Willis (Musical Composer)
(Public Domain)

“Peace on the earth, good will to men
From heaven's all gracious king
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing”

1849 - The United States is between two wars. The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) has passed yet over the next decade the fuel for the Civil War is gathering.

Reverend Edmund Hamilton Sears was born in 1810 in Berkshire, Massachusetts. In 1834 he graduated from Union College Schenectady New York and made his was to the Harvard Divinity School graduating in 1837. It was between the two schools that he penned a poem the poem “Calm on the Listening Ear of Night”. Some thirty years later in 1871, it appeared in the hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. His beautiful words were metered to the tune “St. Agnes” composed by British song writer John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876). It is well known as the tune to the Christian hymn “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee”.​

“Calm on the listening ear of night
Come heaven's melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.
Celestial choirs from courts above
Shed sacred glories there;
And angels, with their sparkling lyres,
Make music on the air.

The answering hills of Palestine
Send back the glad reply;
And greet, from all their holy heights,
The Dayspring from on high.
O'er the blue depths of Galilee
There comes a holier calm,
And Sharon waves, in solemn praise,
Her silent groves of palm.

‘Glory to God!’ the sounding skies
Loud with their anthems ring,
‘Peace to the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven's eternal King!
Light on thy hills, Jerusalem!
The Saviour now is born!
And bright on Bethlehem's joyous plains

Breaks the first Christmas morn.” {2}

After his graduation he became pastor of the Unitarian Society in Wayland, Massachusetts and by 1840 he had relocated his ministry to Ohio. Within a few years he returned to Wayland and it was shortly after his return, he experienced a deep depression. It was during this time of mental and physical exhaustion he penned his poem “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”.​

His melancholy is reflected in the words of his poem using phrases;

“and still their heavenly music floats
o'er all the weary world;
above its sad and lowly plains”

“And ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low,

who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow”; {3}

and unlike his early poem “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” has no reference to the Holy Birth. His words reflect on the message declared by the Angels “Peace on Earth”. Deeply touched by the war, his attention soon focused on another issue of the social strife barreling to a head during the 1850’s and exploding in 1861. The New England Unitarian Churches were among the leading churches speaking out against the institution of slavery. In 1856 Reverend Sears preached from the pulpit:

“When wrong has become so organized as to make the state its permanent body, controlling its functions, and wielding its public men to do its bidding, the commonwealth is an embodied diabolism; humanity dies out of it, and demonism becomes its life and soul.” {5}

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It was Boston born Richard Storrs Willis (1819–1900) who first took Sears’s 1849 poem and metered it to music. A member of Yale’s “Skull & Bones” in 1841 he travelled to Germany studying his craft. In 1850 he wrote the tune he called “Carol” and gave us the melody most Americans know today. Meanwhile in London, Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842–1900) composed a melody named “Noel” and in 1874 it was metered to be sung to Sears’s poem. The carol became popular in the Commonwealth countries with its message of “Peace on Earth; Good Will to Men.” Of course Sullivan went on the fame partnering with W.S. Gilbert and creating operatic pieces such as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado.​

*

“It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” is believed to be the first modern era Christmas Carol written (lyrics and music) in the United States. It is now commonly published with four of it’s original five verses leaving out the third stanza:​

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“The Battle of Antietam”
Painting by Cyrinus B. McClellan (1888)
(Public Domain)

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Sources
1. http://dianaleaghmatthews.com/came-upon-midnight-clear/#:~:text=It%20Came%20Upon%20a%20Midnight%20Clear%20was,a%20Christmas%20poem%20written%20by%20Edmund%20Sears
2.
https://hymnary.org/text/calm_on_the_listening_ear_of_night
3. https://library.timelesstruths.org/music/It_Came_upon_the_Midnight_Clear/
4. https://gmurrell.apprenticeu.com/2018/12/19/it-came-upon-a-midnight-clear
5. Wikipedia - Edmund Sears
 
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