Today's Scripture Reading (November 29, 2023): Luke 2
It is once
again time to dust off the Christmas Carols and begin to sing the familiar
words one more time. And sometimes, the familiarity of the Carols works against
us. We forget that these songs were products of their time and often speak to a
reality that goes beyond the "Christmas Story" to the politics and
experiences surrounding the author at the time the words were written. And the
familiar carol "Silent Night" is one of those carols.
The lyrics to
Silent Night were written in 1816 by a young Austrian Priest named Josef Mohr.
In 1816, the Napoleonic Wars had just ended. It was a tumultuous period for all
of Europe. The Napoleonic Wars included seven individual conflicts. In the end,
the result of the Napoleonic Wars was the defeat of France and the elevation of
Britain (Austria had fought as an ally of Britain); France had won five of the
seven conflicts. The immediate result for Austria was that her borders were
changed (Austria had become smaller through the Napoleonic Wars), and she lost
some control over her future. Austria had rechristened herself as the Austrian
Empire at the beginning of the conflict with Napoleon and France, but by 1816,
there was very little Empire left. As a way of preserving herself, in 1815 Austria
became a member of the German Confederation consisting of the Kingdom of
Prussia, the Confederation of the Rhine, and the Austrian Empire.
With this
historical background, Josef Mohr penned his poem in 1816. In English, we only
have three verses to "Silent Night," but Josef Mohr wrote six. The
three English verses we have are the first, sixth, and second verses of Mohr's
poem. But it is the fourth verse that speaks to the political situation in
Austria at the time that Josef Mohr was writing the carol. Here are the words
of that fourth verse;
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
In the words
of this verse, we can hear Josef's political beliefs that the end of the war
and the birth of the new German Confederation were all part of the grand plan,
as Jesus reached out and embraced all of the peoples of the world. If Christmas
was really a time of peace, this Christmas might have been the first real peace
that Europe had experienced in over a decade.
The story
could have ended here, but it didn't. Mohr would leave the town where the words
to "Silent Night" had been the following year. His journey took him
to another city and another church. So, in 1818, we have the story that has become
the real legend of "Silent Night." The story is told that with
Christmas approaching, the church organ decided to stop working. Some have said
that the mice in the church caused the organ's demise; others have suggested
that the organ had not been well maintained. But the end result was that with Christmas
now only hours away, there would be no organ in the church on Christmas Eve. A
song was needed that didn't require an organ. Mohr took the poem he had written
two years earlier to Franz Xaver Gruber, an organist in a neighboring town, and
asked him to compose music that could be played on a guitar. And "Silent
Night" was born.
A traveling
drama company had been going through Austria at the time, and a meeting had
been planned for the church on December 23. The meeting had to be moved into a
private home because of the organ situation, and it was there that the story of
the birth of Jesus was told one more time. It was a story that had been told in
the church for centuries. And it was at that meeting that "Silent Night"
was played for the first time. That dramatic group took the song with it
wherever they traveled that Christmas Season and the ones that followed,
popularizing this song of peace written in the aftermath of another devastating
war in Europe.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: John 1
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