I think many people would agree, “O Holy Night” is a wonderful song and one of the best loved songs of the Christmas season, but if you think the song is great, you really need to hear the story behind it. The song has its origins in France, when a parish priest a approached a poet from his congregation named Placide Cappeau to write a poem for Christmas mass. Cappeau was a little surprised to have been called upon, as he was not among the most regular church attenders. Still he was honored to be called upon to offer his gift to the church, and so he jumped in. He finished with a piece called “Cantique de Noel.”
Cappeau was so pleased with the poem, that he decided he must set it to music. He enlisted the services of a friend named Adolphe Adams, who was a sought after composer of the time. This song about the birth of Christ, was a challenge to Adams, who was Jewish. Cappeau’s poem represented a day Adams didn’t celebrate and a man he did not view as the son of God. Still, Adams poured himself into the effort and came up with the tune that we all know and love today, but there was trouble in store.
Poet Cappeau walked away from the church to become part of the socialist movement. Not long after, church leaders discovered the composer Adams was Jewish, and the song which was becoming one of the most beloved Christmas songs in France was suddenly denounced by the Catholic church and deemed unfit for church services. Even so, the song remained popular with the French people who continued to sing it.
A decade later an American writer named John Sullivan Dwight, heard the song and felt it needed to be introduced to America. Dwight, was an abolitionist and was especially impressed with verse three, “”Truly he taught us to love one another; his law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother; and in his name all oppression shall cease.” It was Dwight who translated the song into English, with the title O Holy Night. By this time the song had been banned in France for almost 20 years.
On Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden–a professor and former chemist for Thomas Edison–did something long thought impossible. Using a new type of generator, Fessenden spoke into a microphone and, for the first time in history, a man’s voice was broadcast over the airwaves: He read a portion of the Gospel of Luke. Up to this point radio waves only carried coded signals that had to be translated and never voices. Imagine all those radio operators suddenly hearing a voice over their radios for the first time, totally unannounced and reading from the Christmas story. After finishing his reading, Fessenden picked up his violin and played “O Holy Night,” making it the first song ever transmitted on radio waves. Music had found a new medium to take it around the world. Today the song is one of the most recorded and played songs in all of history. This incredible work–requested by a forgotten parish priest, written by a poet who would later split from the church, given soaring music by a Jewish composer, and brought to Americans to serve as much as a tool to spotlight the sinful nature of slavery as tell the story of the birth of a Savior–has become one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever created.