Why one Silent Night is not enough for world peace
Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright. The words and lilting melody of this Christmas classic have calmed my deepest fears for most of my life. My daughter was singing some lines from the carol this morning, and every time I hear different versions or join in singing it at gatherings, or with the family, it has become more meaningful, personal and life-changing. It never ceases to touch my heart and fill me with emotion.
Often it is sung as the concluding song during Christmas concerts in the holiday season as people light candles. I’ve noticed eyes turning misty at such events. It’s moving and inspiring, and the silence that the song exudes can be a balm to lives in distress.
Sleep in heavenly peace. I listened intently to my kid’s rendition as she hit the high notes and stayed there. But I couldn’t help thinking: ‘Ah, peace, I can’t even sleep a dull, earthly peace these days, detached from the cares of the world’.
Maybe it’s a call to a greater peace that we as humans have failed to realise. Who knows, it could be a peace that is beyond human understanding, even suffering. Inexplicable, unreachable and profound.
What on earth was the writer thinking when he wrote the song? Was he removed from the troubles of the world? What was his state of mind? Incidentally, December 24 this year marks 200 years since Silent Night was written.
I consider myself a history fanatic and delved deeper into that bleak, dark night in 1818 when two men with a guitar entered St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria. Calm and bright were at odds that wintery night. The Napoleonic Wars had ended and there was gloom all over Europe. The people of Oberndorf were struggling to make ends meet. But young Joseph Mohr, one of the men who entered the empty church, saw through the travails of the era when he wrote for posterity the poem in German: Stille Nacht, Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht... (Silent Night, Holy Night).
Some historians say that the church organ was destroyed when water seeped into it, others say it was infested with rats. But a humble guitar would do for the masterly string composition, and Franz Xaver Gruber, the other man in the church, a musician and school teacher, came up with a melody that time cannot erase.
They say great music emerges from great stress. I had missed something about the origins of Silent Night earlier, but caught it while writing this piece about peace. In 1816, Europe was in the grip of a terrible famine. The crops failed, the soil was parched. Historians now blame it on ash from a distant volcano that spewed contents across the continent. And guess where that volcano was located: Indonesia. The same country in which a volcano tsunami erupted this Sunday, killing 280 people. Thousands were injured. Sadness has enveloped that region, yet there is hope for peace through this trial by fire and water, if only we see through human failings while connecting with each other in the real world in the spirit of goodwill.
Both Mohr and Gruber were victims of those years of war and famine, yet they rose above their despair through their composition. I am writing this column while listening to Bing Crosby’s version of the carol. A boys’ choir is in the background, almost angelic, though I still don’t know what it means in real life.
Crosby’s baritone is warm and soothing. I have come to appreciate the power and value of peace through this song, one of the few numbers that I can claim to know by heart. I have sung the soprano and tenor parts of
Silent Night while dreaming of a music career during my college days, and I must confess it never fails to change and transform me every time I hum, sing, or meekly listen to it. There is a sense of submission to a bright future leaving animosities behind, of finding renewed hope and clasping it in the silence of the night.
The harmony is perfect and it has been credited with ending a spell of fighting, albeit briefly during World War I in 1914. British, French and Belgian troops on one side, and German troops on the other, decided to
It never fails to change and transform me every time I hum, sing, or meekly listen to it. There is a sense of submission to a bright future leaving animosities behind, of finding renewed hope
end the war temporarily in the trenches for one Silent Night to exchange gifts and sing carols together.
“I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,” said one British veteran from the Fifth Batallion named Alfred Anderson in an interview later. “It was a short peace in a terrible war,” he said.
Which brings me to the latest ceasefire brokered in Yemen that has led to a cessation of hostilities between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels. The withdrawal of US troops from Syria and Afghanistan points to greater calm in a region that has seen so much bloodshed for decades, though experts would like to pin the rap on US President Donald Trump for ending their dreams of a global war economy. I am no fan of Trump but I can say that only peacemakers will inherit the earth.
A short break from terrible wars, while welcome, is no substitute for intimate and enduring peace in hearts. A lone Silent Night when all is calm and all is bright is not enough for the world.