Talk:I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Dab page
There needs to be a disambiguation page for Peace on Earth (song), as U2 made a song with the same title on All That You Can't Leave Behind. Inhuman14 (talk) 02:00, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Missing Stanzas
The recent edit by Diaa abdelmoneim should be reverted because the Wikisource doesn't have the last two stanzas about the battle, or the historical note about how the poem was written during the Civil War. --SurrealWarrior (talk) 12:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Wait. So the article should be reverted because Wikisource is incomplete?  Does no one else see the problem with this?  The poem was originally composed in seven stanzas; two of them are commonly left out because they directly reference the Civil War, but that doesn't make them nonexistent.  Rogue 9 (talk) 01:02, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Year of Composition
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem "Christmas Bells" after his son was wounded at the Battle of New Hope Church, VA during the Mine Run Campaign on November 27, 1863. Longfellow received word of his son's injuries on December 1 of that year, and Charles was brought home on December 8. The poem was written during Charles Appleton Longfellow's recovery. Unless you mean to tell me Longfellow took over a year to write the poem, I fail to see how it can be placed in 1864, a year which saw Charles Appleton Longfellow discharged from the army in February. Rogue 9 (talk) 01:15, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The reference which supports the year of composition being 1863 (A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion) actually states 1864 as the year of composition (see https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Wadsworth-Longfellow-Companion/dp/031332350X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527980301&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=A+Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow+Companion.+Westport%2C+Connecticut%3A+Greenwood+Press): "This poem was written on Christmas Day 1864, when the Civil War was raging.". I've been trying to figure out whether it was 1863 or 1864 but haven't been able to find an unambiguous authoritative source - various articles on the web state about 50/50 either 1863 or 1864. Can anyone figure this out?  What should be done when the cited source disagrees with the sentence that cites it?SWeatherford (talk) 23:19, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Lyrics
It seems strange to have an article on a Christmas Carol without having the lyrics - particularly as just about every other article for carols that I have found does have the lyrics - is there any particular reason for this? JenLouise (talk) 08:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Songwriters
Trivialist removed the reference to a lovely version of the poem, illustrated by handbells, did not answer when asked about it. Always, if you remove it, please justify the removal! Don't just blithely pull an entry out. MusicScienceGuy (talk) 23:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I hope someone will add mention and discussion of Philip Ledger's 2011 arrangement (Oxford). Dorothea1927 (talk) 15:03, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Problem with historical dates in "Origins"
In the section "Origins," this article says that Longfellow's son Charles was wounded in November 1863 in the Battle of New Hope Church. But that particular battle apparently took place in May 1864 (so says its wiki page). What's the truth? David aukerman talk 18:49, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a good thing to catch. If I recall, Charles was injured twice, so perhaps this article (source?) is confusing the two instances. I wish I had a source to justify my speculation... --Midnightdreary (talk) 18:48, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * He was not injured twice. He was discharged from the army in February 1864 after being wounded at New Hope Church, Virginia, not Georgia, in November 1863 during the Mine Run campaign, as I already pointed out once on this talk page.  I am displeased that the fact-checking has slipped this much.  I'm going to fix the article (again). Rogue 9 (talk) 22:19, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
I would like to print I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day — Preceding unsigned comment added by Janet P Berge (talk • contribs) 22:06, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, knock yourself out; the poem's old enough that it's in the public domain. Rogue 9 (talk) 21:57, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Add sources, don't subtract them
Text you deleted: "Since then, 149 recordings of the song have been released. "

I'm not sure if I care enough to get into another damn edit war, but if you want to delete useful information not because the information is inaccurate, but because you personally don't like the citation used, the correct way to do that is to find a better reference and cite it, not to delete information.

Geoffrey.landis (talk) 16:47, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's hopelessly incomplete. For instance, I have a collection of several hundred Christmas and seasonal albums. I quickly looked through my list and found 31 unique recordings of that one song and 7 more that appeared more than once, either on a compilation album or in a re-issue of an album. I then tried to find which of those 31 were in the user-generated (which by definition makes it fail as a reliable source) secondhandsongs.com list that you provided as a source. Of my 31, I had an earlier, alternate version of one entry and mine was not listed. There were 18 of mine that were not listed at the site and 12 that were. To use that unreliable source to suggest that there have only been 149 recordings is simply false and misleading. It also means that we would have to revisit that unreliable source annually to increment the count or use the as of template as a qualifier. So the correct way to do this is to not make statistics up and to use reliable sources. Walter Görlitz (talk) 08:19, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It is useful information. If you can't find a better source, hold off on editing until you can. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 04:15, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I just showed that it is in no way useful. Not only is is incomplete, it's not even a reliable source. If you cannot add correctly sourced material, you should avoid editing anything. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:11, 12 January 2021 (UTC)