O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night, O holy night, O night divine!
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.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Public domain hymn text (1855 (English translation)). Words by John Sullivan Dwight, from Placide Cappeau.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Placide Cappeau, a French wine merchant and occasional poet, wrote the original French text of this carol, 'Minuit, chretiens,' in 1847, reportedly at the request of a local parish priest who wanted a new poem for the town's Christmas Eve service; Cappeau composed the verses while traveling by stagecoach toward Paris. Adolphe Adam, a well-known French composer already established as a successful writer of ballet music, set Cappeau's text to music shortly afterward.
The carol was reportedly later banned for a period from official use within French Catholic church services after church officials learned that Cappeau himself, though he had written this specifically Christian carol, held loosely defined and religiously unorthodox political views associated with French socialism, and separately that Adam, the composer, was of Jewish heritage — officials of the period apparently considering both facts sufficient grounds to discourage the carol's continued use within formal Catholic worship despite its evident and lasting popularity among ordinary congregations.
John Sullivan Dwight, an American music critic and Unitarian minister, translated the French text into the English version commonly sung today in 1855. Dwight was also an active and outspoken supporter of the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and he was reportedly particularly drawn to the hymn's third verse — rarely included in modern hymnals but present in Dwight's original translation — which declares that Christ 'taught us to love one another' and that 'the slave is our brother,' language Dwight saw as directly reinforcing the abolitionist cause he personally championed.
The carol achieved a further, entirely separate moment of historical significance on Christmas Eve 1906, when it was reportedly the first piece of music ever broadcast over radio, played by the Canadian-American inventor Reginald Fessenden as part of an early experimental radio transmission — meaning a carol partly banned from French churches for its authors' backgrounds went on, within roughly six decades, to become one of the first pieces of music ever transmitted by the new technology of radio.
