This is my second-favorite Christmas song (for the two-days worth of entries I wrote about my favorite one, go here and here).

My friend Renee reminded of "O Holy Night" today when she named it as her favorite Christmas song. She tells some interesting stories about her family and their experiences with various types of music - both Christmas and non-Christmas - as she was growing up.

This carol has been heralded as among the most beautiful of all Christmas carols, with excellent lyrics and a superb (although VERY difficult to sing)  melody.

The author of the lyrics was Frenchman Placide Cappeau (1808-1877), a resident of Roquemaure,  located a few miles north of the historic city of Avignon. He was a commissionaire of wines, and an occasional writer of poetry. It is said that Cappeau was about to embark upon a business trip to Paris when the local parish priest asked Cappeau to write a Christmas poem. On December 3, 1847, about halfway to Paris, Cappeau received the inspiration for the poem, "Minuit, Chretiens."

When he arrived in Paris, he took the poem to the composer Adolphe Adam, an acquaintance of M. and Madam Laurey who were friends of Cappeau. Adam was at the peak of his career, having written his masterpiece, Giselle, only a few years before, in 1841. He was also the composer of over 80 stage works. Adam wrote the tune in a few days, and the song received its premier at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve 1847 in Roquemaure.

Notwithstanding its intrinsic beauty and initial success, the song was later attacked by churchmen in Cappeau's native France because of his reputation as a social radical, a freethinker, a socialist, and a non-Christian. Indeed, he adopted some of the more extreme political and social views of his era, such as opposition to inequality, slavery, injustice, and other kinds of oppression.

Composer Adolphe Adam, was Jewish. That, plus his reputation as a composer of light operatic works and ballets, was deemed incompatible by those churchmen with the composition of a Christian religious song. One French bishop denounced the song for its "lack of musical taste and total absence of the spirit of religion."

Fortunately, more rational perspectives have prevailed. By 1855, the carol had been published in London, and has been translated into many languages. The best known English translation is " O Holy Night" authored by John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893) of Brook Farm, MA. It was first published 1855 in his Journal of Music, and was reprinted in songbooks of the period.

Franco-Prussian War

There is an unsubstantiated (but frequently repeated) story that this carol figured prominently on Christmas Eve, 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. The story goes that, unexpectedly, a French soldier jumped out of his trench and sang Cantique de Noël. Moved by the song, the Germans did not fire upon the French soldier, and inspired by the sentiment, a German soldier emerged from his trench and sang Luther's Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her, a popular Christmas hymn from his country ("From Heaven Above To Earth I Come"). The beautiful Austrian carol, Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht! or "Silent Night", was also reportedly sung by soldiers in trenches on both sides.

A similar exchange would occur during World War I on Christmas Eve, 1914.

First Radio Broadcast of 1906

This carol had the distinction of being the first one ever played live on a Christmas radio broadcast. That first broadcast was conducted by Canadian Reginald Fessenden (1866-1931) from his Brant Rock, Massachusetts station to ships at sea on December 24, 1906, with the assistance of his wife Helen, his secretary Miss Bent and his associate Mr. Stein.

At 9PM, Fessenden began his broadcast playing Handel's "Largo" (presumably from his opera Serse or Xerxes) on an Ediphone phonograph. He then played Gounod's "O Holy Night" on his violin, singing the last verse as he played.  Finally, he read a selection from the book of Luke: "Glory to God in the highest — and on earth peace to men of good will." Originally, Miss Brant and Mrs. Fessenden were to read the selection; stage fright, however, intervened. The group completed the broadcast by wishing their listeners a Merry Christmas and then saying that they proposed to broadcast again New Year's Eve.

The Christmas program was picked up as far south as Norfolk, Virginia; when the program was repeated on New Year's Eve, it was heard as far away as the West Indies.