The birthplace of this song is Wayland, Massachusetts, about 20 miles west of Boston.

It was there that a Unitarian minister, Edmund Sears, wrote the poem from which the song gets its lyrics. In 1849, he joined with a buddy, Richard Storrs Willis, who contrinuted his melody called “Carol.” 

Or at least that’s how it goes here in the United States.

Apparently, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” is an entire different sounding song on the other side of the Atlantic. The melody for the British Commonwealth version of the song was written by Arthur Sullivan, as in Gilbert & Sullivan.

One of the strange things you find about holiday songs is that they often reflect the political issues of the time. In this case, Sears was troubled by the turbulence in the world at the time. The U.S. has just seized Mexican land after a war. Europe was churning with revolution. 

The whole third stanza, which doesn’t get played much, is about how men are too busy fighting to hear angels sing.

I’ll stay with the U.S. version and with an American icon, Ella Fitzgerald, whose rendition resonates more with me than most others.

https://music.youtube.com/search?q=it+came+upon+a+midnight+clear+ella+fitzgerald