December 9

Silent Night

by Lisa Reiff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91aX3qBUm6I (with lyrics) https://youtu.be/p-8xM8L1LWY (without lyrics)

Silent Night has always been one of my favorite Christmas hymns. I remember, as a little girl, sitting at our old upright piano and learning the “easy piano” version while the Christmas tree lights and tinsel twinkled in the corner of the living room. Hearing it always brings back warm memories of Christmases past. 

The song lyrics were first written as a poem in 1816 by Joseph Mohr, a young Austrian priest, who was inspired after he took a Christmas eve walk, looking out over his quiet, peaceful, snow-covered town. Two years later, just before the Christmas Eve service, the old church organ stopped working and there was no one to fix it in time. Joseph was distressed about not having any music for the service, so he gave the lyrics to the choir director, Franz Gruber, who wrote the melody and quickly taught it to the church choir. They performed it that evening; Joseph on guitar and Franz leading the choir in the midst of an otherwise silent night. The organ repairman heard the song when he came through the next week and would then play it as he traveled from town to town. It caught on far and wide and was eventually translated from the original “Stille Nacht” into over 300 languages, including the beautiful version we sing today.

I love that what looked like a very disappointing Christmas Eve service brought us the most beautiful Christmas hymn. God brings some of the biggest blessings out our most disappointing circumstances, just like He did on that silent night over two hundred years ago.