Silent Night - Lyrics & History

The song “Silent Night” is a favorite at Christmas Time. And there are many stories that are told about how this peaceful song has affected people from many walks of life. One such story is told of soldiers on a German battlefield on a pitch dark night during WWII. It was in the middle of a heated Gun-Battle and out of the darkness was heard a lone voice singing “Silent Night – in German” – then more German soldiers joined the Chorus, then American Soldiers joined in .....and for about 10 minutes you could hear Silent Night in German and in English all across the valley. And then it stopped and for a moment there was peace on the Battlefield. It was quite a phenomenon – and even more so considering there were similar reports in France, Holland, and Italy. .... Perhaps you know the story of Joseph Mohr in Austria who wrote the poem Silent Night and collaborated with his friend Franz Gruber who added music to the poem. As the story goes, the Church Organ was broken and could not be used for the premiere performance of this legacy song, therefore the two performed the song with the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar.