“Silent Night” is the world’s most famous and most popular Christmas Carol.  It was composed in 1818 by an organist named Franz Gruber, to the lyrics of a poem written by a minister named Joseph Mohr, in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria.  Here’s how it happened.

     On the night of December 23, 1818, a troop of traveling actors arrived in the little village of Oberndorf (“oh’-burn-dorf”) in Austria.  They were scheduled to perform “The Christmas Story” in the small church of St. Nicholas in the village.

     But when they arrived at the church, they found the organ broken.  So they had to perform the play in the home of a church member who had an organ.  The Assistant Pastor of the church, Rev. Josef Mohr, was present for the play and was deeply touched by it.

     So, after the play ended, Mohr climbed a snowy hill overlooking the village to pray.  The lights of the village under the starry sky looked like a Christmas card, and as Mohr prayed, he remembered a poem he had written two years before.  The poem was about the night Jesus was born and, as Mohr prayed, he felt the poem could be made into a Christmas Carol for the Christmas Eve service the next evening at St. Nicholas church.

     So the next morning, Mohr visited the church’s organist, Franz Gruber, and asked him if he could write some guitar music for the poem (because the church organ was broken).  Gruber said he could, and he sat down and worked the rest of the day on it, until the music was complete.

     And on Christmas Eve of 1818, in St. Nicholas church in Oberndorf, Austria, Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber played and sang their new carol for the first time in public, using Gruber’s guitar.  The members of St. Nicholas loved the carol immediately, and they soon were singing it for their friends and neighbors.

     Before long, the new carol spread through all the villages of the Alps.  Then it spread over all of Europe.  And then it spread to America, where it was translated into English in 1859.

     Today, “Silent Night” is the best-known Christmas Carol ever written.  It’s the Christmas Carol that’s the most recorded … and the most played … and the most sung … of all the carols ever written.  Each Christmas, “Silent Night” is sung by many millions of people worldwide in over 300 different languages.

     And it all happened because a little church’s organ was broken.  And because a young Assistant Pastor climbed a snowy hill one night in Austria to pray.