OPINION:
In 1816, near the starving and ruined city of Salzburg, Austria, a 24-year-old priest, the Rev. Joseph Mohr, suffered — as did his flock — through the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. In that suffering, he wrote a poem about the nativity of Christ.
Two years later, right before midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 1818, Father Mohr asked Franz Gruber, his friend and a schoolteacher and church organist in a nearby town, to set the poem to music and write a guitar accompaniment because the parish organ had been damaged by flooding.
The song these two young men created is a simple tune with a simple set of lyrics. It was created almost by happenstance by ordinary men struggling through difficult times. Yet it has been sung by billions of people in all kinds of places — churches, battlefields during Christmas truces, television specials — and by singers of all types and intensities of religious beliefs.
The song that Father Mohr and his friend Gruber created — “Silent Night” — is the most popular Christmas carol on the planet. It has been translated into 300 languages and dialects and has been covered by more than 700 artists, from Bing Crosby to Al Green.
Why is this song so popular?
The lyrics are direct and unassuming, yet they express a powerful idea: that God loves us and wants us to be happy; that He comes to bring light and grace into our lives; that He sent his son to save us and to show us how to live and to invite us into the divine life.
Father Mohr, despite struggling against poverty and privation in the wake of destructive and pointless warfare, captured the hope, optimism, and what T.S. Eliot would later call the “beauty and joy based on a devotion that is at once both religious and realistic” that marks Christmas.
Christmas is celebrated — and “Silent Night” is sung — by billions of people precisely because they remind us that hope, optimism, beauty and joy are realistic.
In our corner of the world, at St. Mary’s in Chinatown in Washington, the congregation sings a cappella version of three verses of “Silent Night” to conclude midnight Mass. Few in the congregation make it through the song without tearing up. It is not clear why this one song draws that sort of emotion.
One answer is that in singing the song, it is easy to be overcome by a feeling of gratitude for a loving God who came to live with us and save us — a God who was born in a stable to a peasant woman and an itinerant carpenter.
One is also overcome with a sense of perspective — a feeling of the magnitude of the moment and the triviality and temporality of our own struggles.
The song and the event it celebrates also emphasize our shared history and brotherhood with the other billion and a half Christians, as well as everyone else on the planet, each of whom — like us — is making their way to God as best they can.
When you think about it that way, whatever fears one has about ourselves or our civilization recede into insignificance. The problems of the day are seen as just that: the problems of the day. What happened on Christmas — what we celebrate every Christmas — is just so much bigger than all of our troubles.
Father Mohr and Franz Gruber, who suffered through greater difficulties than most of us, understood that. So should we all.
Merry Christmas.
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