The Christmas hymn that stopped a war
By BILL DUNCAN
The View from Here
"Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright, round yon virgin mother and child. Holy infant, so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace…" words to my favorite Christmas hymn, although when I first heard them as a small boy I thought the words "round yon virgin," were "barnyard virgin," because of all the livestock around the babe in the manger.
Since this is to be my last column before Christmas, this column is about this particular hymn. Even the origins of the hymn are worth retelling.
Some stories say Father Joseph Mohr was prepared for the midnight Mass at the Church of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, Austria when he discovered the church organ was broken and all the music selected for the service required an organ to accompany it. Fr. Mohr sketched out the words on Dec. 24, 1818, accompanying himself on the guitar, and sang the words "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" in German for the first time.
Another version is that Fr. Mohr wrote the words in 1816 and a musician friend, Franz Gruber, wrote the guitar music he used on Dec, 24, 1818. Some consider the traditional account of its origin to be a legend while others believe it to be true. Regardless, the story of the well-known carol is fascinating. Whatever the truth is, this humble hymn with its lullaby-like melody and simple message of heavenly peace became a favorite of the world at Christmas time.
A German guard in a P.O.W. camp in Sagan, Germany during
World War II played "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" on a trumpet on Dec. 24, 1944, and the very memory of that music wafting through a darkened, cold, brick barracks still sends chills down the spine of Don Kitzman of Roseburg, who was an American prisoner of war in Germany. He was a co-pilot on a B-17 shot down over Germany on Nov. 2, 1944 and had just been moved into a permanent camp at Stalag III C, Sagan, Germany during World War II. For a brief moment, he remembers, that music made everyone feel at peace.
Kitzman spent Christmas in that German prison and remembers how the prisoners in his barracks pooled together the hoarded contents of care packages that included powdered milk, raisins, prunes, and packets of vegetable seeds, margarine, soda crackers and tooth powder and creatively made a fruitcake from the ingredients.
Perhaps the most famous story about the effects the hymn has is told in a book written by Stanley Weintraub, simply called "Silent Night." Weintraub writes about the winter of 1914 on the battlefield of Flanders during World War I as the Germans had been in fierce battle with the British and French in trenches separated by a no man’s land. It was Christmas Eve when the German troops began singing "Silent Night." Even though the words were in German, the British and the French understood and answered with the French and English words to the hymn.
The result was a spontaneous truce. Soldiers left their trenches meeting in the middle of no man’s land to shake hands. The first order of business, according to Weintraub’s account, was to bury the dead who had previously been unreachable during the exchange of gunfire across the devastated landscape.
Then the combatants exchanged gifts, chocolate, cognac, postcards, newspapers, tobacco. Rifles were put aside while an impromptu game of soccer was organized.
The peace didn’t last long, but at least there was "peace on earth" in the trenches that Dec. 24, 1914.
"Silent Night" has in many ways become an anchor for Christmas celebrations throughout the world. It has been translated into 300 languages and dialects. Its message of heavenly peace sets the theme for Christmas celebrations around the globe.
It is a prayer for peace on earth that resonates today.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)