O Holy Night | Chuck Allen
It’s just not a Christmas Eve Service without the quaint, reverent tones of the illustrious Christmas Carol, “O Holy Night.” I can still hear my mother honoring the Lord as she sang this beautiful song in such a hushed, yet powerful tone. I will always connect O Holy Night and my sweet mother together.
The story behind the song is so special. Here’s a brief look at the story.
It was 1847, in a small French town, where Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure, a local poet, penned the original words. Originally, the song was entitled,“Cantique de Noel.” Adolphe Charles Adams set the original lyrics to music. Adolphe was a Jewish man who didn’t celebrate Jesus, but he did compose music to go with the beautiful words, and the song was performed only a few weeks later at a Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Years later, an American writer, John Sullivan Dwight, saw something in the song that moved him beyond the story of the birth of Jesus. An abolitionist, Dwight strongly identified with the lines of the third verse: “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.” Dwight published his English translation of “O Holy Night” and the song quickly became popular across America.
On Christmas Eve 1871, in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War, a French soldier jumped out of his trench. Both sides were amazed at the soldier that lifted his voice to the heavens and began singing “O Holy Night.” Quickly, a German soldier stepped into the open and answered the Frenchman’s voice.
The fighting stopped for the next twenty-four hours while the men on both sides observed a wonderful peace in honor of Christ’s birth.
Since “O Holy Night” was first sung at a small Christmas mass in 1847, the song has been sung millions of times in hundreds of languages, across the globe.
As the band Mercy Me has proclaimed, “I Can Only Imagine” that Holy Night in Bethlehem. It mustn't have felt holy that evening. It must have felt so odd for Yahweh to have been silent for four hundred years and choose to burst upon the human scene and move into the neighborhood as Emmanuel, God With Us.
But what joy that we can sing “O Holy Night” with the certainty of Heaven’s bright and morning star still among us today.
“O Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth.”
Pastor Chuck Allen
