This is sometimes sung It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, which is what I thought the words were. A Unitarian minister in Wayland, Massachusetts, near Boston, Edmund H, Sears, wrote a poem in 1849. Writing during a period of personal melancholy, and with news of revolution in Europe and the United States' war with Mexico fresh in his mind, Sears portrayed the world as dark, full of "sin and strife," and not hearing the Christmas message. A year later Richard Storrs Willis wrote this joyful music for it, giving us one of the few hymns of the 19th century with the real Christmas message, "Peace on earth, good will towards men."
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