The Power and Message of Christmas Carol
Universal Truth Makes Silent Night the Favorite Christmas Song
Nov 19, 2008
Silent Night, Holy Night . . . The words and melody are simple, yet profound. Hearing the song makes one stop and breathe and be transported to a place of natural beauty and calm. It is a heavenly song and universally loved.
Why is Silent Night the all time favorite Christmas carol?
Silent Night Promises Solitude
What we really want from Christmas is the season of peace and beauty, that is promised in the greeting cards, says Bill McKibben, Methodist minister and author of A Hundred Dollar Holiday (Simon and Shuster, 1998), in an essay on the Center for a New American Dream website.
“There’s a moment when we sing (Silent Night) each year at the end of the Christmas Eve service, with the lights out and everyone holding a candle that frames their face with soft light, and that marks for me the absolute height of Christmas,” says McKibben.
McKibben believes that consumerism is one of the biggest changes in our culture in the nearly 200 years since Silent Night was written. He says that consumerism has confused us about what is really important in our lives. The song Silent Night helps us return to a place of solitude and communion with nature, that we so desperately long for.
History of Silent Night
Silent Night was written by a young Austrian priest, Joseph Mohr, in 1818. Written for guitar, it was introduced at Midnight Mass in a small village church in Oberndorf, Austria. “The music was composed by a musician who was not known outside his village.
There was no celebrity to sing at its world premiere. Yet its powerful message of heavenly peace has crossed all borders and language barriers, conquering the hearts of people everywhere,“ writes Christmas historian Bill Egan in his essay A Powerful Message of Heavenly Peace.
Song Stops Two Wars
Silent Night is such a powerful song that it caused a battle during World War I to temporarily cease fire, while British and German soldiers sang the song on Christmas Eve. Again, in World War II, fighting was suspended while people around the world listened to opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink sing Stille Nacht, says Egan.
Some Silent Night Facts and Trivia
Silent Night may be the only Christmas Carol with its own museum and chapel, located in its birthplace Obendorf, Austria
John Freeman Young, who later became Bishop Young, translated the German lyrics into English, while serving at New York's Trinity Church in 1859.
Silent Night has been translated into 300 languages. Silent Night Web lists 196 versions of the song in 133 languages.
Silent Night has been recorded by artists in every music genre. Listen to a variety of versions online.
The song was excluded from popular carol books in the early part of the 20th century. The Oxford Book of Carols, 1928, did not publish the song because they considered it vulgar. (The New Oxford Book of Carols, 1992)
Certainly Joseph Mohr created a song of universal truth and beauty -- one so powerful that it could suspend two world wars. Just think what it could do for us, if we could take this song deep into our hearts and souls this Christmas season. Perhaps we could experience the true joy of Christmas and begin to live a more peaceful and compassionate existence here on Earth.
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