Yes, it gets cold in Indiana when Christmas comes near. But snow-- the hoped-for ingredient to make it a "White Christmas"--is not guaranteed. Nor is it in most parts of the country and the world. And yet, we often hear "if there is no snow, it doesn't look or feel like Christmas." Our Christmas image, shaped by the central and northern European reception of the Nativity of Christ--on December 24--simply calls for cold and snow.

The villagers of Oberndorf, when they first sang "Silent Night," written by their Vicar Joseph Mohr, with music and accompaniment by the village teacher and organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, surely must have had snow knee deep, as it is usually the case in the Alpine regions. When we envision or see on television the story and the setting of "Silent Night," Oberndorf near Salzburg, Austria, we see the little country church, buried in snow, with the mountains as a backdrop.

And Clement C. Moore and Thomas Nast, the artistic mentors of Santa Claus, have him coming in a sleigh--from the cold and snowy region of the North Pole, through a "Winter Wonderland" with "Jingle Bells" announcing his arrival, while millions are "Dreaming of a White Christmas."

The following is the description of the genesis of "Silent Night," taken from the Austria Media Bulletin 9&10 of 1993.

175 YEARS "SILENT NIGHT, HOLY NIGHT" - "STILLE NACHT, HEILIGE NACHT"

26-year old Joseph Mohr, assistant to the priest at St. Nicholas' Church at Oberndorf, a village on the Salzach River 11 miles down river from the city of Salzburg, was worried in the days before Christmas 1818; the old church organ was out of commission once more. It would be Spring before the itinerant organ repairman would come by to fix the instrument. The implication was almost unthinkable: Mass on Christmas Eve without music. Mohr had a poem he had written, a moving expression of faith putting the miracle of Christmas, the coming of the Lord into this world as a human, a newborn child, into words the simple folk could understand. He approached his friend, 31-year-old Franz X. Gruber, a school teacher in the neighboring village of Arnsdorf and organist at St. Nicholas', shared the poem with him and asked him to set it to music so that they could sing it together, to guitar accompaniment at the midnight service celebrating the birth of Christ.

Thus, on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1818, a song was created, a carol composed, that was to become the most universal of all songs, sung all over the globe in every language known to mankind. And yet, It was only by coincidence that "Silent Night, Holy Night" came down to us at all. After the premiere, the song was quickly forgotten; if Carl Mauracher had not been commissioned to rebuild the organ at St. Nicholas' in 1825, found a handwritten copy of the words and musical notation during his work in the organ loft and taken it along to his native Ziller Valley in the mountains of Tyrol, the song might have remained ephemeral. Mohr was transferred away from Oberndorf in 1819, his ties with F. X. Gruber became tenuous. Mauracher's home, the Ziller Valley, has always had a very strong musical tradition, used to be the home of folk choirs such as the Strasser and Rainer families that traveled and performed all over Europe for the edification of noblemen and wealthy patricians. Choral groups from this Tyrolian valley spread "Silent Night, Holy Night" wherever they went, making it known as "the Tyrolian folk carol."

Had it not been for the curiosity of the director of the Royal Court Choir of Berlin, where "Silent Night" had become the favorite of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, who researched the origins of the carol and traced it to Salzburg in 1854, we might never have learned of Joseph Mohr, Franz X. Gruber and the circumstances which brought about the creation of the world's best-loved Christmas carol 175 years ago.

OTHER RESOURCES