How Longfellow’s ‘Christmas Bells’ became ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’ December 21, 2012: Check out this HuffPo piece about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Christmas Bells", which became the popular carol "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." A sample: Longfellow crafted this poem some months before Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Within the poem, however, he captures the years of [...] by Harriet Staff