Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas (12 page)

T
he strange and fascinating story of “O Holy Night” began in France, yet eventually made its way around the world. This seemingly simple song, inspired by a request from a clergyman, would not only become one of the most beloved anthems of all time, it would mark a technological revolution that would forever change the way people were introduced to music.

In 1847, Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure was the commissionaire of wines in a small French town. Known more for his poetry than his church attendance, it probably shocked Placide when his parish priest asked the commissionaire to pen a poem for Christmas mass. Nevertheless, the poet was honored to share his talents with the church.

In a dusty coach traveling down a bumpy road to France’s capitol city, Cappeau considered the priest’s request. The poem obviously had to be religious, focus on Christmas, and be based on Scripture. Using the gospel of Luke as his guide, Cappeau imagined witnessing the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.
Thoughts of being present on the blessed night inspired him. By the time the commissionaire arrived in Paris, the poem “Cantique de Noel” had been completed.

Moved by his own work, Cappeau determined that his “Cantique de Noel” was not just a poem, but a song in need of a master musician’s hand. Not musically inclined himself, the poet turned to one of his friends, Adolphe Charles Adams, for help.

Adolphe, born in 1803, was five years older than Cappeau. The son of a well-known classical musician, Adolphe had studied at the Paris Conservatoire. By 1829 he had produced his first one-act opera,
Pierre et Catherine.
He followed this success with
Richard en Palestine.
Adams then scored acclaim with ballets such as
Faust, La Fille du Danube
, and
La Jolie Fille de Gand.
His talent and fame brought requests to write works for orchestras and ballets all around the world. Yet the lyrics that his friend Cappeau gave him must have challenged the composer in a fashion unlike anything he had received from London, Berlin, or St. Petersburg.

As Adolphe studied “Cantique de Noel,” he couldn’t help but note its overtly spiritual lyrics embracing the birth of a Savior. A man of Jewish ancestry, these words represented a holiday he didn’t celebrate and a man he did not view as the Son of God. Nevertheless, moved by more than friendship, Adams quickly and diligently went to work, attempting to marry an original score to Cappeau’s beautiful words. Adams’s finished work pleased both poet and priest. It was performed just three weeks later at a midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Neither the wine commissionaire nor the composer was prepared for what happened next.

Initially, “Cantique de Noel” was wholeheartedly accepted by the church in France and the song quickly found its way into various Catholic Christmas services. But when Placide Cappeau
walked away from the church and became a part of the socialist movement, and church leaders discovered that Adolphe Adams was a Jew, the song—which had quickly grown to be one of the most beloved Christmas songs in France—was suddenly and uniformly denounced by the church. The heads of the French Catholic church of the time deemed “Cantique de Noel” as unfit for church services because of its lack of musical taste and “total absence of the spirit of religion.” Yet even as the church tried to bury the Christmas song, the French people continued to sing it, and a decade later a reclusive American writer brought it to a whole new audience halfway around the world.

Born May 13, 1813, in Boston, John Sullivan Dwight was a graduate of Harvard College and Divinity school. He became a Unitarian minister in Northampton, Massachusetts, but for inexplicable reasons grew physically ill each time he had to address his congregation. These panic attacks magnified to such an extent that Dwight often locked himself in his home, scared to venture out in public. It soon became obvious he would be unable to continue in the ministry.

Gifted and bright, Dwight sought other ways to use his talent. An accomplished writer, he used his skills to found
Dwight’s Journal of Music.
For three decades he quietly edited the publication. Although he couldn’t face crowds of people, some of the most gifted musicians and music lovers in the Northeast were inspired by his confident writing. As he looked for new material to review, Dwight read “Cantique de Noel” in French. The former minister quickly fell in love with the carol’s haunting lyrics.

Not only did Dwight feel that this wonderful Christmas song needed to be introduced to America, he saw something else in
the song that moved him beyond the story of the birth of Christ. An ardent abolitionist, Dwight strongly identified with the lines, “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!” The text supported Dwight’s own view of slavery in the South. The writer believed that Christ came to free all men, and in this song all men would be confronted with the fact.

Keeping the original meaning intact, Dwight translated the lyrics into a hauntingly beautiful English text. Published in his magazine and in several songbooks of the period, “O Holy Night” quickly found favor in America, especially in the North during the Civil War.

Back in France, even though the song had been banned from the church for almost two decades, many commoners still sang “Cantique de Noel” at home. Legend has it that on Christmas Eve 1871, in the midst of fierce fighting between the armies of Germany and France during the Franco-Prussian War, a French soldier suddenly jumped out of his muddy trench. Both sides stared at the seemingly crazed man. Boldly standing with no weapon in his hands or at his side, he lifted his eyes to the heavens and sang, “Minuit, chrétiens, C’est l’heure solennelle Où l’Homme Dieu descendit jusqu’à nous,” the beginning of “Cantique de Noel.”

After completing all three verses, a German infantryman climbed out of his hiding place and answered with, “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm’ ich her. Ich bring’ euch gute neue Mär, Der guten Mär bring’ ich so viel, Davon ich sing’n und sagen will,” the beginning of Martin Luther’s robust “From Heaven above to Earth I Come.”

The story goes that the fighting stopped for the next twenty-four hours while the men on both sides observed a temporary peace in honor of Christmas day. Perhaps this story had a part in the French church once again embracing “Cantique de Noel” as being worthy of inclusion in holiday services.

Adams had been dead for many years and Cappeau and Dwight were old men when on Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden—a thirty-three-year-old university professor in Pittsburgh and former chief 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: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,” he began in a clear, strong voice, hoping he was reaching across the distances he supposed he would.

Shocked radio operators on ships and astonished wireless owners at newspapers sat slack-jawed as their normal, coded impulses, heard over tiny speakers, were interrupted by a professor reading from the gospel of Luke. To the few who caught this broadcast, it must have seemed like a miracle—hearing a voice somehow turned into electrical waves and transmitted to those far away. Some might have believed they were hearing the voice of an angel.

Fessenden was probably unaware of the sensation he was causing on ships and in offices; he couldn’t know that men and
women were rushing to their wireless units to catch this Christmas Eve miracle. Yet after finishing his recitation of the birth of Christ, Fessenden picked up his violin and played “O Holy Night,” the first song ever sent through the air via radio waves. When the carol ended, so did the broadcast—but not before music had found a new medium that would take it around the world.

Since that first rendition at a small Christmas mass in 1847, “O Holy Night” has been sung millions of times in churches in every corner of the world. And since the moment a handful of people first heard it played over the radio, the carol has gone on to become one of the entertainment industry’s most recorded and played spiritual songs. Total sales for the thousands of different versions of the carol are in the tens of millions. 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 grown to become one of the most beautiful, inspired pieces of music ever created.

O
n December 24, 1865, Phillips Brooks was a half a world away from home and feeling like an older man than his thirty years. Already recognized as one of the most dynamic Christian voices in America, it was Brooks, only six years into his ministry, who had been called upon in May to give the funeral message over President Abraham Lincoln. That solemn honor, in tandem with leading the congregation of Philadelphia’s Holy Trinity Church through the bloody years of the Civil War, had taken its toll. Worn out and badly needing a spiritual rebirth, Brooks took a sabbatical and left the United States to tour the Middle East.

On Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, the American felt an urge to get away from the hundreds of other pilgrims who had journeyed to the Holy Land for the holidays. Although warned that he might encounter thieves, the preacher borrowed a horse and set out across the desolate and unforgiving countryside. For many peaceful hours he was alone with his thoughts as he studied a land that had changed little since
the days of Paul and Timothy. For the minister, December 24 was a wonderful time of prayer and meditation.

At dusk, a sudden sense of awe fell over Brooks. Under a clear sky, the first stars just beginning to emerge, he rode into the still tiny and remote village of Bethlehem. He recalled the story of the birth of his Savior, and by being present in the place in which Jesus was born, was able to add vivid detail to the familiar tale in Scripture. The great speaker was all but speechless as he considered the heavenly King, born in such modest surroundings. There, on streets almost unchanged since biblical times, Brooks felt as if he were surrounded by the spirit of the first Christmas. He would later tell his family and friends that the experience was so overpowering that it would forever be “singing in my soul.”

Like the path from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, Phillips Brooks’s own life had often been rocky and winding. At the age of twenty-two, the Harvard graduate was a struggling teacher at Boston’s Latin School. Though his knowledge of his subject was great, he found it all but impossible to teach because his students wouldn’t devote the effort Brooks felt was needed to master the course. Frustrated, Brooks gave up.

Lacking faith in himself, the young man turned to prayer and Bible study in an effort to find his place in the world. Still unsure of his future, Brooks entered the Episcopal Theological Seminary and began pastoral studies. After graduating in 1859, he began his ministry in Philadelphia.

What Phillips Brooks had lacked in the classroom, he made up for in the pulpit. His messages were powerful and dramatic. In 1861 he was called to lead the congregation of the Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia. No sooner had he unpacked his Bible than Brooks contacted well-known real estate agent Lewis Redner. The preacher convinced supersalesman Redner to serve
as Sunday school superintendent and organist at Trinity. Together Brooks and Redner welcomed thirty children to their first Sunday morning class. Within a year—thanks to Brooks’s preaching and Redner’s music—the Sunday and Wednesday services were filled to overflowing and one thousand children were attending Sunday school each week. Over the next two years those numbers continued to build.

Yet even as Holy Trinity grew and his fame spread far and wide, Brooks was growing physically and spiritually tired. By 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, the national spirit was dying almost as quickly as the soldiers on the battlefields. Everyone knew someone who had been killed or gravely injured in the conflict. Scores of women in the church wore black as they mourned the loss of a husband or son. While the preacher tried to fight it, darkness fell over every facet of the services. Brooks was severely taxed each time he stood in front of his congregation. They wanted him to be inspirational, to believe that the good things in life they had once known would someday be theirs again. They wanted an end to the war. Yet even though he made a valiant effort, the preacher couldn’t give his flock what they needed most: peace.

When the war finally ended, the visibly fatigued Brooks felt that the sweetness of life and the soul would soon return to his flock. Yet the pain only intensified when President Lincoln was assassinated. Although he was not Lincoln’s pastor, and felt ill-prepared to preside
over the ceremony, Brooks was asked to speak at Lincoln’s funeral because of his reputation as an orator. Digging deep, he found words to fit the moment, but seeing a great leader senselessly slain and the exhaustion of the effort itself left him void of everything he needed as a pastor. In an attempt to rediscover and restore his own faith, he left the pulpit to visit the Holy Land. It was a trip that dramatically changed his life and renewed his calling. The dark days ended, the joy of living returned, and his positive attitude again became apparent in his every step and word.

Returning from his sabbatical with renewed vigor, Brooks tried to relate to his congregation the incredible experience of walking where Jesus had walked. Yet Brooks’s unparalleled oratory still fell short. For the next three years, “the singing in [his] soul” remained strong, but his inability to share the stirring imagery haunted him to such an extent that he wrote the following note in his journal:

Before dark we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it, in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds…somewhere in those fields we rode through, the shepherds must have been. As we passed, the shepherds were still keeping watch over their flocks.

He also added this experience to the log of his trip:

I was standing in the old church in Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I know well, telling each other of the Saviour’s birth.

Still, even after reliving this rich experience, inspiration about how to convey those amazing moments to his flock did not visit the preacher.

When Brooks looked ahead to the holiday season of 1868, he again thought of riding into Bethlehem at dusk and the church service that had followed. This time, he didn’t force the words out, he simply relived the experience and jotted down the lines that seemed to float into his head. His thoughts soon took the form of a poem. When he finished, he hurried to share it with Lewis Redner.

While reading the simple words, Redner finally understood the power of what Brooks had experienced in the Holy Land. To further share this message, the organist tried to compose music to accompany the poem. For hours he struggled at the piano. Finally, on December 24, as Redner went to bed, he was forced to admit he had failed.

Just as Brooks had been unable to find dynamic oratory to fully describe what he had experienced in Bethlehem, Redner was unable to compose a majestic rhapsody to carry the preacher’s simple words. It was only in his bed, long after he had given up his efforts, that the organist found an unadorned and straightforward tune. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Redner discovered the tune given to him in slumber perfectly fit Phillips Brooks’s words. As if blessed by God himself, on Christmas morning “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was complete.

For the next six years “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was a Philadelphia favorite. Printed in cheap leaflet form, almost every church in the city used it during their Christmas services. In 1874, William Huntington published Brooks’s impressions and Redner’s music in
The Church Porch
music collection. By the time of Phillips Brooks’s death in 1893, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” had become one of the most beloved Christmas carols in the world.

Phillips Brooks is now recognized as the greatest American preacher of the nineteenth century. His first volume of sermons
sold more than two hundred thousand copies when released in 1878 and is still read and studied today. There is even a building named for the preacher at Harvard University.

Yet it is the songwriter, not the preacher, whose work millions now know and cherish. It is the simple language of a common traveler in search of spiritual renewal that continues to touch lives today. In a sermon Brooks once said, “It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawns on you.” On a horse, in a tiny village, a half a world away from his home and family, the meaning of Phillips Brooks’s life and the purpose behind his work were brought into sharp focus. Since that time, millions have been blessed because of his ability to share his revelation with the world.