There are two versions of this Christmas carol, American and English. The American melody was composed in 1849, by Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900), critic for the New York Tribune and amateur composer, whose music was highly regarded by Felix Mendelssohn. Written by Edmund Hamilton Sears, a Unitarian minister, the poem which inspired Willis also appeared in 1849. In 1850, Uzziah Christopher Burnap's (1834-1900) arrangement of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear was published in The Christian Register, in Boston. The English version is the song is Arthur Sullivan's adaptation of a melody composed by a friend. It was published in 1874, in Church Hymns with Tunes, which Sullivan edited.

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