The story behind the world’s favourite carol - Silent Night - is one of the best known, but it’s also surrounded by all sorts of legend and misunderstanding. You’ve probably heard the story of the mouse chewing through the organ bellows – well I’m sorry but it’s not true. But never mind – the truth is just as interesting.

We’re in the village church appropriately dedicated to St. Nicholas in Oberndorf in the Austrian Alps. On Christmas Eve 1818, the 26-year old assistant pastor, Joseph Mohr, introduced a new song for guitar and voices that he had written with the church organist and teacher, Franz Gruber. The song was, “Stille Nacht Heilige Nacht”. Mohr and Gruber sang it together.

The words had been written by Mohr two years earlier, before he moved to Obendorf. The tune has been attributed to many different composers - Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, but it’s now clear it was written by Franz Gruber. The legend goes that the carol was written on Christmas Eve itself but there’s no evidence of that, and it’s more likely it was prepared well in advance.
After the premiere, the song was quickly forgotten. It was only meant for the one service and no-one thought it would be sung again. But then seven years later a man called Carl Mauracher came to Obendorf to rebuild the organ. He found a handwritten copy of the words and music during his work in the organ loft and took it home with him.

The carol then developed a life of its own. It was widely sung by Tyrolean choirs, and then in the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, and in time throughout the world. Amazingly the carol has been translated into over 300 languages all over the world.

The most common English translation of the carol is of three verses of Mohr’s original six. They are translated by John Freeman Young who lived in the 19th century in the United States and be-came the second bishop of Florida in 1867. There are many different translations from the German into English. In one popular translation by the Irishman Stopford Brook even the first line is different, translated as Still the Night, Holy the Night.

The popularity of the carol echoes our desire for peace at Christmas. In truth the night Jesus was born in the overcrowded town on Bethlehem would have been far from silent. But the carol presents us with the Christmas we all long for: an escape from the busyness of the modern Christmas into a time and place when God’s peace was tangible. The song says to us that the peace we yearn for can be ours when we know that Christ the Saviour is born.