Spend 30 seconds learning about the background of this song, and you will be knee deep in tears. Longfellow wrote it in the midst of a heavy, heavy dose of despair. His son had been mortally wounded in the Civil War (in which he had enlisted against Longfellow's wishes), and his wife had recently died as the result of an accidental kitchen fire at home. He wrote the poem on what must have been a very bleak Christmas Day in 1864. It was first put to music in 1872. Mr Renn loves singing an arrangement by Greg Hansen, that's pretty starkly different from the traditional arrangement. It's a departure from the tune written for the poem by John Baptiste Calkin. BUT I can't find any recordings of it. If you know of one, hook us up.
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