On Christmas Day 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sat in his chair at his writing table and began a poem. “I heard the bells on Christmas Day / Their old, familiar carols play, / and wild and sweet / ...

(Parts of this column were first published as an editorial in the York Daily Record/Sunday News at Christmas in 2014) American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to a friend in 1863: “I have been ...

It’s long been the favorite Christmas carol here. Though history remembers him more for “Hiawatha” and “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” the most poignant work from the masterful pen of Henry ...

‘Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: / ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep,’” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow proclaims in the tremendous final verse of his 1865 Civil War poem “Christmas Bells.” We ...