It was the night before Christmas, and not a creature was stirring. Except for the mice at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria, who were busy chewing through the bellows of the organ. Their handiwork left the church’s priest, the Rev. Joseph Mohr, scrambling to find music for a Christmas Eve service. So he dashed off a few lines about the night Jesus was born and asked composer Franz Xaver Gruber to set the lyrics to a simple tune, played on guitar.
On that night over 200 years ago, the two stood in front of the church’s nativity set and performed a song that began with words “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.” Better known as “Silent Night,” the song would go on to become one of the season’s most beloved Christmas carols, translated into more than 300 languages and sung all over the world by artists from Bing Crosby Crosby to Beyoncé.
At least, that’s how the story goes. Legends aside, the song endures in part because it brings a sense of calm to the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, said Brian Lee, head of the music department at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. “We seem to live in such a noisy chapter in history,” Lee said. “I think even just the title of the song in and of itself speaks to people.”
Singing carols is as old as Christmas itself, Keith Getty noted in an email to Religion News Service. The story of Christmas and the birth of Jesus, he said, begins with Mary, Zechariah, Simeon and angelic choirs all bursting into songs. But “Silent Night” is unique, he said.
Most of the story about its origins is true. But the details don’t quite match the legend. While “Silent Night” may have been performed for the first time 200 years ago, Mohr had penned the poem a bit earlier, amid a trying time in Austria’s history at the end of the Napoleonic wars.
It’s true the church’s organ wasn’t working properly, though Getty called the tale about the mice “a little bit over the top.” Using a guitar to accompany the song turned out to be “providential,” he said. On the guitar, “Silent Night” sounds like a lullaby. Its gentle 6/8 time signature mimicks a mother rocking her child — appropriate alongside lyrics about the baby Jesus sleeping in heavenly peace.
After its debut, it spread as a folk song, said Paul Westermeyer, professor emeritus of church music at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. The Rainer family singers, a traveling singing group from Austria, then brought it to America, performing the song in 1839 at Trinity Church.
Twenty years later, a priest at Trinity, John Freeman Young, published the first English translation of three verses of “Silent Night.” Young had been ordained at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tallahassee, Fla., and later became bishop of Florida.
For countless churchgoers, though, that moment of quiet reflection captures what Christmas is all about — a moment amid the noise of the holidays when all is calm and bright. It’s a moment to gather with family and friends to remember a holy infant so tender and mild.
“It’s just a very hushed, calm, just unified spirit that kind of takes over, and it is very moving,” Gettysaid.