It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

"It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" (1849) — sometimes rendered as "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" — is a poem and Christmas carol written by Edmund Sears, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts. Sears' lyrics are most commonly set to one of two melodies: "Carol," composed by Richard Storrs Willis, or "Noel," adapted from an English melody.

Edmund Sears composed the five-stanza poem in Common Metre Doubled during 1849. It first appeared on December 29, 1849, in the Christian Register in Boston.

Sears served the Unitarian congregation in Wayland, Massachusetts before moving on to a larger congregation in Lancaster. After seven years of hard work, he suffered a breakdown and returned to Wayland. He wrote It Came Upon the Midnight Clear while serving as a part-time preacher in Wayland. 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.

Sears is said to have written these words at the request of his friend, William Parsons Lunt, pastor of United First Parish Church, Quincy, Massachusetts for Pastor Lunt's Sunday School. One account says the carol was first performed by parishioners gathered in Sears' home on Christmas Eve, but it is unknown to what tune as Willis' familiar melody was not written until the following year.

According to Ken Sawyer, Sears' song is remarkable for its focus not on Bethlehem, but on his own time, and on the contemporary issue of war and peace. Written in 1849, it has long been assumed to be Sears' response to the just ended Mexican–American War.

In 1850, Richard Storrs Willis, a composer who trained under Felix Mendelssohn, wrote the melody called "Carol." This melody is most often set in the key of B-flat major in a six-eight time signature. "Carol" is the most widely known tune to the song in the United States.

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