December 14

December fourteenth, “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day” (1865). Unitarian Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Wrote "Christmas Bells" (a poem later set to music and renamed "I Head the Bells On Christmas Day") just months before the end of the Civil War. The poem captures the despair felt by the nation after years of war. Drawing on his own experience of having hope restored after tragedy, the final verss celebrates the awesome resilience of people who endure all manner of grief and misery yet find ways to confidently hope toward a day of "peace on Earth."