On Silent Night

The Spirit of Christmas (Pt. 4): Stillness, Hope, and Love's Pure Light

[Greetings, friends, from Iowa! And Merry Christmas Eve! As we creep closer to Christmas, we inch closer to Theophony (an encounter with a deity that manifests in an observable and tangible form).¹ It’s everywhere in the Biblical Christmas story—an angel (Gabriel) appears to Mary, another (unnamed) angel of the Lord appears to the shepherds, a star signals to the Magi, Christ arrives in a manger. As I’ve mentioned before, like all great holidays, Christmas is a time when the veil between the spiritual and material worlds is thin, and stuff from there finds its way here.

Every year around this time, I try to watch for the miraculous. A few days ago, a friend of mine posted a video from New Orleans of what she thought was a meteor streaming across the night sky (see below for a video).² And I thought “of course… it’s that time of year… it came upon a midnight clear.”

It will be easy over the next week to get lost in the hustle and noise of celebrations with friends and family. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t participate; this is the time of year for those things. But it is also the time of year to sit and listen and reflect… to watch for messages, to keep your heart and head open to the miraculous, to leave room in your heart for the mysterious to enter, and to ask: where do you want to send me? How can I pour hope into a world starved of hope? What should I be prioritizing? Where have I lost sight of my guiding star?

Only in this silence and stillness—in the erémos—can we hear the whispers of the Spirit of Christmas (see the first three parts of this series for more on the Spirit of Christmas: On the Spirit of Christmas, On Wonder, and On First and Second Things.) And what do we hear from the Spirit?

Messages of hope and reassurance in times of darkness, peace in times of hostility, and divine love in times of hurt. Messages captured in the Christmas Carol “Silent Night,” written in 1816 by Joseph Moor as he worked to supply a poverty-stricken congregation with hope that there was still a God who cared.

It is to the origin story of “Silent Night” and its legacy of hope, peace, and love that we devote the rest of today’s essay.]

Figure: Adoration of the Magi by Sandro Botticelli (1474)

Silent Night: A Legacy of Hope

The place is Salzburg, Germany. The season is Winter. And the year is 1816. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), Europe is struggling to rebuild. Then Mount Tambora erupts, and ash from the fallout spreads, killing crops and causing widespread famine, leading to what became known as the “Year Without a Summer.” Like many other European folk, the German people were weary, and their spirits were at the breaking point.

Then in Salzburg, preacher Joseph Mohr, wanted to give the people something to lift their spirits… he wanted to give them hope that there still existed a God who cared. He wanted to provide a light in the darkest of times.

The answer came upon a midnight clear, as many Christmas signs do. Staring up at a starry night sky then down at the peaceful village beneath it, Mohr was inspired. He stood under “glories stream[ing] from heaven afar” and felt the radiant beams pouring into him. His spirit was stirred as he picked up the pen and let it lead his hand across the page.

Slowly, a six-verse poem began to form. Stille Nacht. (See the P.P.S. for a translation of the original.)

In 1817, Mohr was transferred to the parish of St. Nicholas in Obendorf, where he befriended Franz Xaver Gruber, a local schoolteacher and organist. Eager to set his poem to music, Mohr recruited Gruber to the cause, and Gruber composed the melody in a few hours.³ In the Winter of 1818, the pair performed it for the first time in front of a small congregation. That evening, the small parish of St. Nicholas became like the manger of Bethlehem spoken of in the song—the cradle of something that would change the world.

From these humble origins, the tune would spread, first becoming popular in the nearby Zillertal valley and then getting picked up by two traveling families of folk singers (the Strassers and the Rainers), who carried the song across Europe and, eventually, to America. It wasn’t long until the song belonged to the world.

Silent Night: A Legacy of Peace

Fast forward to Belgium, Christmas Eve of 1914. It is the height of World War I, and German and British soldiers are dueling as enemies in opposite trenches. Between them is No Man’s Land—an unclaimed territory filled with chaos, craters, and the cries of the dying.

During a break in the action, a familiar melody from a lone voice—the voice of Walter Kirchhoff, a tenor with the Berlin Opera—danced out of the German trenches into British ears, which recognized it as “Silent Night.” They echoed the tune back to the Germans in English. The shooting stopped.

A number of descriptions from the diaries and letters of soldiers there that day detail the account.⁴ As if infused with deep magic, the song suspended war’s heavy curse. Troops from both sides set down their arms and met halfway, bravely crawling out into No Man’s Land. And for the day, soldiers met each other as fellow men in the heart of darkness to share songs, food, games, and joy.

Figure: The Illustrated London News's illustration of the Christmas Truce (Originally published January 9, 1915).

Something about “Silent Night,” now translated into 300 languages, stirred the better angels of their nature and inspired the soldiers to put down their arms and see each other as human. As British soldier John Ferguson recalled it: “Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!” “Here they were,” writes Bairnsfather in his memoir, “the actual, practical soldiers of the German army. There was not an atom of hate on either side.”⁵

Something about the song, to this day, stills the voices conspiring to divide us. Its sweet melody nudges us back into the arms of a universal grace that transcends Christianity and unites people across cultures and faith—binding the wounds of alienation and stitching us back together. It is as if the song itself wraps us in “love’s pure light” and lifts us out of ourselves to a place where we are no longer separate but one great whole.

This is the beauty of “Silent Night,” and these are ripples of the artist’s devotion. This is why Dostoevsky said that beauty will save the world. Mohr, in creating something to mend his small congregation cannot possibly have known how his tune would change the world and become an anthem of hope, peace, and love. But it did.

All because he went for a Winter walk under a clear night sky and made room for the Spirit of Christmas to enter his heart and exit his pen. Because he, a talented musician in his own right, humbly recruited another (Gruber) to help him make it as beautiful as it could be in service of others.

So let this be your encouragement: open your ears and your heart to the whispers of Winter and the signs in the skies. Listen. Keep watch. Messages will arrive. Then work and work well to serve those around you. Send out streams of never-ending light. Deal in hope. Be the reason someone believes in miracles.

There’s no telling how far those ripples reach.

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P.S. Here’s a version that gives me chills. The notes at 2:20 are insane.

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P.P.S. The following is a direct translation of the original German text from an authentic version of Franz Gruber’s known as Autograph VII and written around 1860. Most English versions of “Silent Night!” include just three verses (1, 6 and 2, in that order). You’ll note the translated lyrics are (quite) different than the words you’re most likely familiar with:

1. Silent night! Holy night!
   All are sleeping, alone and awake
   Only the intimate holy pair,
   Lovely boy with curly hair,
   Sleep in heavenly peace!
   Sleep in heavenly peace!

2. Silent night! Holy night!
   Son of God, O how he laughs
   Love from your divine mouth,
   Then it hits us - the hour of salvation.
   Jesus at your birth!
   Jesus at your birth!

3. Silent night! Holy night!
   Which brought salvation to the world,
   From Heaven’s golden heights,
   Mercy’s abundance was made visible to us:
   Jesus in human form,
   Jesus in human form.

4. Silent night! Holy night!
   Where on this day all power
   of fatherly love poured forth
   And like a brother lovingly embraced
   Jesus the peoples of the world,
   Jesus the peoples of the world.

5. Silent night! Holy night!
   Already long ago planned for us,
   When the Lord frees from wrath
   Since the beginning of ancient times
   A salvation promised for the whole world.
   A salvation promised for the whole world.

6. Silent night! Holy night!
   To shepherds it was first made known
   By the angel, Alleluia;
   Sounding forth loudly far and near:
   Jesus the Savior is here!
   Jesus the Savior is here!

1. I say this understanding how unlikely it is that the day marked December 25th on our calendar is the day when Christ was born.

2. Experts have commented that the display was not a meteor because its speed was too slow, with speculation that it may have been a StarLink satellite or something else man made.

3. Until the original manuscript was found in Mohr’s handwriting in 1994 (with Gruber named as composer), many speculated that the music had been written by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven.

4. Accounts of the Christmas Truce can be found in the memoirs of the British machine gunner Bruce Bairnsfather, the letters of J. Reading and John Ferguson, and the diary of German Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch, among others.

5. These quotes are taken from the article here.