Silent Night

Nearly every shop we go into at this time of year is playing tapes of Christmas carols, and one of the most liked seems to be 'Silent Night'.

There is a lovely story about how it came to be written.

On a Christmas Eve, in the year 1818, in the snowbound village of Oberndorf, in Austria, the church organist discovered that the organ wouldn't play a note! There would be no music for the midnight service. He hurried to find the priest and between them they wrote a very simple lullaby, one that the children could learn easily and that the or- ganist could play on his guitar.

In the short time before the service they taught it to the children in the choir, and that night, by the flickering light of candles, was the first time that anyone heard 'Silent Night'. And perhaps no-one else would have heard it if the man who came to mend the organ had not picked up the sheet of music, played it and liked it. It stuck in his mind and wherever he went he played it. Gradually more and more people grew to love the simple words and tune and they called it 'The Song of Heaven'.

So when you hear it, in shops or at school, remember the young organist and the priest who wrote it in such a rush one snowy Christmas Eve long ago.