For most of us, our two most dominant and cherished memories of our Christmas Eve services in our churches were first the candle-lighting as we sang “Silent Night,” and second the soprano or tenor soloist singing “O Holy Night.” “O Holy Night” is certainly one of the most universally beloved Christmas songs of all time. It has a fascinating story of its origin in France, but has since spread all around the world.
Placide Cappeau (1808 – 1877), a French poet, wrote the words to the poem “Minuit Chretiens” (English translation: “midnight for Christians”). When only eight years old, a friend accidentally shot him in the hand, which led to its being amputated. In 1847 when he was commissioner of wines in Requemaure, a small French village in southern France, and a known poet (though not very faithful in church attendance), his parish priest asked him to write a poem for their Christmas mass. It was to commemorate renovations to the church organ. What he wrote on a stagecoach en route to Paris we know today as “Cantique de Noel.” Cappeau asked his friend Adolphe Charles Adams, a famous classical musician of secular operas, to compose music for it. It was sung at Christmas Eve mass, setting the tradition that continues today.
Before long it became widely known throughout France and was frequently sung in Roman Catholic services. But when Cappeau later abandoned his faith and left the church and joined the socialist movement things changed. When it was discovered that Adams (pictured here) was a Jew, the Roman church uniformly denounced the song and banned it from use in church services. But it was too late; too many people had already come to love it and sing it.
A decade later, songwriter and music critic John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893) introduced the song in America. He was a part-time Santa impersonator, Unitarian minister and transcendental abolitionist. He was moved by the lyrics “Truly He taught us to love one another; His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother; And in His name all oppression shall cease.” The English lyrics he wrote in 1855 quickly became popular, especially in the North during the Civil War. He made some changes in the French text when rendering it in English. He is remembered as a Former director of the school at the nineteenth century Brook Farm commune in Massachusetts. Dwight witnessed the conversion to Catholicism of a number of his fellow commune members, including Isaac Hecker, who later became a Roman Catholic priest and founder of the Paulist Fathers, the first religious community of priests created in North America.
Meanwhile, back in France, legend has it that on Christmas Eve in 1871, in the midst of intense fighting between French and German soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War, an unarmed French soldier jumped out of the trenches and walked onto the battlefield singing the first lines of “O Holy Night” in French. A German soldier soon joined in singing one of Martin Luther’s carols, “From Heaven Above to Earth I Come,” and fighting ceased for the next 24 hours in honor of Christmas.
Years later, Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden (1866-1932), a young college professor and former chief chemist for Thomas Edison, figured out that by combining two frequencies, radio could do more than transmit Morse code. It would be possible to speak! On Christmas Eve 1906, Fessenden made history as he spoke into a microphone over the airwaves, reading the nativity account from Luke’s Gospel. “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” Shocked radio operators on ships and wireless business owners suddenly flocked to their units to hear over their tiny speakers someone reading the Christmas story from the Book of Luke. Fessenden then picked up his violin and performed the first song ever sent through the airwaves by radio: “O Holy Night.”
Stanza 1 combines the fact of Jesus’ birth with the response of a “weary world.” The emotional heaviness of a “world in sin and error pining” is quite powerful. And how wonderful to know this Savior by faith so as to look forward with confidence to the day of His return when “a new and glorious morn” will break out before us!
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born.
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.
Stanza 2 brings the Wise Men into the picture. And with so many of our Christmas carols, it suggests that we are standing there beside the child along with them. In a real sense, we are doing so spiritually when our faith is the same as theirs. And the description of Jesus as our “friend” is a biblical concept that we perhaps recall too seldom.
Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
Here come the wise men from Orient land.
The king of Kings lay thus in lowly manger;
In all our trials, born to be our friend.
He knows our need, to our weakness no stranger,
Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King, Before Him lowly bend!
Stanza 3 challenges us to do more than gaze with admiration, but to go further by putting into practice the call of the gospel “to love one another.” This is the stanza that connected with abolitionist sentiments during the Civil War era. The call continues today wherever slavery and oppression disrupts what God has intended for His world.
Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,
His pow’r and glory, evermore proclaim!
His pow’r and glory, evermore proclaim!
Here is a link to the song as performed in the glorious visual and acoustical setting of the chapel at King’s College, Cambridge.
Here is another rendition of this classic song.