One very special Christmas memory of mine is of Christmas Eve a few years before my children were born. We went to a little church close to where we live for midnight services. There were candelabra at the altar, choir-loft and at the entrance to each pew along the aisle. Candlelight illuminated the church in a very soft but warm glow. We were each handed a tapered candle as we walked in. At the conclusion of the service each candle was lit and the flame passed from one person to the next down the rows as the choir and congregation stood to sing “Silent Night.” It reminded of a line from William Shakespeare: “These blessed candles of the night.”
We may owe the creation of the carol “Silent Night” to a little mouse. This crossed our wire-services some years back. “One of the most famous Christmas carols is “Silent Night.” Legend has it that we owe it all to a mouse…
“It was a snowy, Christmas Eve in 1818. A young parish priest, Father Joseph Mohr, huddled before the fire and scribbled three short stanzas of verse for his first midnight mass in Oberndorf, Austria. He asked his organist, Franz Gruber, to put the poem to music. Gruber did, but it had to be played that night on the guitar because of a mouse hole in the organ bellows. That might have been the end of “Silent Night.” But the man who came to fix the organ heard the song and asked for a copy. He took it home and taught it to a family of singers. They were heard by a royal court musician, who in turn played it for the King of Saxony. The King loved it and had the cathedral choir sing it every year. Before long, “Silent Night” became a favorite Christmas carol the world over.” Apparently the Queen of Saxony loved the carol as well.
The carol actually made its debut on December 25th, 1818. It was performed for the first time at the Church of St. Nikolaus. “The carol was originally known as “Song From Heaven.”
“The biggest-selling recording of “Silent Night” [in years past] was the one recorded by Bing Crosby on Decca Records in 1942. It is said to have sold more than seven-million copies. Crosby donated all the royalties from the disc to a fund for American missions in China and to finance an entertainment unit for the American Forces.” This according to “Today in Music History,” also from our wire-services on December 25th, 1996.
There is a story about Christmas that haunts me. The year was 1914, and the world was at war. It was Christmas on the Western Front and all was quiet for the first time since the war began. An eerie calm settled over the war-ravaged countryside as well as in the muddy trenches. Soldiers on both sides were deep in thought about loved ones left behind. One of our wire-services described the scene: “For the men far from home, there was no end in sight to the mud, the cold, the rats, the bad food, the loneliness.. and death. Then the silence was broken. Not by gunfire but by the voice of a German soldier–singing ‘Stille Nacht, Helige Nacht’ … ‘Silent Night, Holy Night.’ As his voiced faded, French soldiers responded with a joyous ‘Noel, Noel.’ Up and down the line, soldiers on both sides raised their voices in the Christmas carols of their homelands. A few ventured out of the trenches onto the scarred earth that lay between. In minutes, the bitter enemies were, briefly, comrades, exchanging pictures of their families. They shared what little food and drink they had and more songs. Some soldiers slogged off into the forest and brought little trees to set up on the ‘no-man’s land’ between the trenches…
“The holiday peace lasted all that week–until New Year’s Day when the guns roared again…”
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Don Jackson
