Silent Night – History Retold

One of my favorite parts of Advent (the weeks preceding Christmas) would be a beautiful movie we watched every year at school without fail, on the last Friday before Christmas break. It was a movie on an enormous VHS tape called The Songs of Christmas, starring a cheerful choir director called Joyce Bulifant and her talented chorus of children, who put on a play about the various Christmas hymns and their origins. One of the simplest, and, for me, most touching stories was about

“Silent Night.”

The early 1800s were a trying time for the poor people of Oberndorf, Germany. The Napoleonic Wars had just come to an end, and they had endured the “Year Without a Summer.” A young priest, a skilled guitarist and violinist, poet, and simple, faithful leader, Joseph Mohr, felt stirred to do something to remind the people of Oberndorf to take heart and remain hopeful. He wrote a simple poem, just six lines, for his congregation, the Parish of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf. He brought it to his friend, Franz Gruber, the church organist.

In The Songs of Christmas, Gruber is in despair that a mouse had chewed through the organ before Christmas. Though wary, initially, Gruber set Mohr’s words to a simple, lilting lullaby, which the two performed together, in harmony, during the Christmas Eve service, in December of 1818. Now, more than 200 years, Silent Night is a hymn just as beautiful, still carrying a message of hope. 🕊