The moment you step off the train, you may think you’re in a fairy tale. And you’ll be close. The village of Oberndorf, Austria, is quaint and spotless, its people friendly and approachable. The Salzach River wanders through this postcard hamlet framed by snow-covered Alps in the distance. A 10-minute stroll and you’re climbing the steps to a small chapel on the site where a famous song was first performed.
To your left, a hand-carved nativity stops you in your tracks and once inside the chapel, two stained glass windows honouring Father Joseph Mohr, the parish priest of St. Nicholas Church, will remind you why you came. It was 1816 and the town was in crisis. Bargers made their living transporting salt down the river, but the river had flooded, putting many out of work. Twelve years of Napoleonic wars had decimated the country.
As Christmas approached, many were dubbing it, “The Year Without a Sun.” Temperatures had nose-dived following a volcanic eruption in far away Indonesia, the largest in 1,300 years. The Northern Hemisphere was suffering an unprecedented global calamity as volcanic ash spewed skyward, circling the globe, eclipsing the sun, causing snow in summer, and triggering crop failure, poverty, starvation, and death. Many believed it to be the end of the world.
In the village of Mariapfarr, Father Joseph Mohr’s congregation was poverty-stricken and in need of a fresh shot of hope. So, Mohr sat down and penned six poetic verses about the Christ child who had brought peace to this dark world—a Saviour who still saves, a God who still cares.
One year later, in 1817, Mohr transferred to the parish of St. Nicholas in the picturesque town of Oberndorf and, in time, took the poem he had written to his new friend, an esteemed local schoolteacher and organist Franz Gruber. “Would you compose the music for these six verses?” he asked. And so it was that a song was born. The two of them planned its debut after the Christmas Eve service was over, for in those days a guitar was seen as inappropriate for formal worship.
They had no idea if the song would be sung again. They couldn’t know that the Strasser Family, popular folk singers throughout the Alps, would rehearse and sing it at festivals and fairs, while drumming up business for their parents who were makers of stylish winter gloves. They hadn’t a clue that when those four Strasser kids harmonized, they would hit that song clean out of the park and all the way to the royal palace. That’s right. Soon their presence would be requested by the king and queen, and those four nervous kids would give “Silent Night” a majestic performance and a royal nudge.
From there, the song would travel the globe, be translated into 300 languages, and bring hope and a badly-needed reminder that the Prince of Peace, the light of the world, had come. When the Christmas Eve service ended in the parish of St. Nicholas, no one left the church. So the unlikely pair stood before the people and sang the words that would touch millions for centuries to come.
“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, sleep in heavenly peace.”
Some say the organ was broken that Christmas Eve, others say it was just fine. What we do know is that the spirits of the people were broken. And into that dark Christmas Eve, two
friends, one a tenor, one a bass, brought “Silent Night” to life, with Mohr quietly strumming his sycamore wood guitar, a guitar you can view to this day in the Silent Night Museum
in Hallein, Austria. Along with its sheet music, the guitar is insured for $1 million. Of course the message it helped bring is priceless.
We need it now as they needed it then: Christ the Saviour is born.
