Silent Night is 200 years old

Silent Night, surely the most famous and most loved Christmas carol of all time, is now 200 years old. It was born in a church in Obendorf, a small town populated by sailors and shipbuilders by the Salzach River near the city of Salzburg in Austria.

Salzburg is also known as the home of the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and in recent times of the tour based on the Hollywood movie The Sound of Music. Somewhere in between these two memorable events, there happened Silent Night.

Legends abound about how the song came to be. All these agree though about the time, on a cold, snowy Christmas eve, the place, the coincidentally aptly named church of St. Nicolas and about the creators. They were Franz Gruber, a school teacher and his friend, the new parish priest of the village, Father Joseph Mohr.

The most popular tale tells of Gruber meeting Mohr after school to prepare the music for the evening Mass. They selected the hymns and Gruber, who was also the church organist, went up to the choir loft to practice the songs on the organ. To his horror, he discovered that the bellows had been eaten by mice and could not produce any sound.

The music they had can be played only on the organ and there was no way they could get new arrangements or find another organ or have what they had repaired. The thought that they would have to have Christmas Eve Mass without any music saddened the two young men and they started thinking of ways to remedy the situation.

Now Mohr remembered a poem about Christmas that he had written a few years back. It was in German and titled Stille Nacht. He thought that maybe if Gruber could compose a melody that could be played on the guitar, they could have the song performed by the choir after Mass in front of the Nativity scene.  And that was how it happened. Mohr and Gruber with a choir of children sang Silent Night for the very first time.

This event began the now traditional practice of singing Silent Night following the Christmas Eve Mass in many churches. To this day, there are still places in Europe where Silent Night is considered so sacred and is never sung or played, except before the Nativity scene after Mass on Dec. 24.  

I do not know how they do it out there as everybody knows the song even in remote areas and many recordings is played on the radio and television and everywhere during the Yuletide Season. But that is how much they revere Silent Night.

I also do not know if there is any truth about the ravenous mice in the gallery. There is also nothing written about why Mohr was inspired to write the poem or how Gruber came up with the melody. I can only credit everything to divine inspiration. That Christmas Eve, the church of St. Nicolas gave birth to the simplest, but most moving carol ever heard.

The Napoleonic wars have destroyed much of Europe. It was a difficult time for many people. Silent Night expressed their desire for a better life where peace and goodwill reign. The song touched the hearts of everybody that Christmas Eve 200 years ago and continues to do so. The calming strains of Silent Night have been known to stop fighting and to melt even the hardest of hearts. 

Time has laid to waste the church of St. Nicolas. The Silent Night chapel now stands in its place. Tourists often visit the site including the homes of Gruber and Mohr. There is also a Silent Night Museum which has on display Mohr’s original guitar and the early choir books used by the traveling singers who popularized the song all over Europe and later brought it to the United States and from there to all over the world in various languages. 

Proof of how important Silent Night has become is the fact that it was proclaimed by UNESCO in 2011 as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

Many Christmas carols have been written since. Some are as touching and as unforgettable but there is only one Silent Night.  Whether in English, French or Swahili or our own Pilipino, it remains a most enduring embodiment of Christmas and its message of peace.

Merry Christmas, everyone.