Dear Customers and Friends:
“Silent Night” is one of the world’s most beloved Christmas carols. Each season, the song’s soothing lyrics fill us with peace and hope at Christmas Eve candlelight services, midnight Masses, and on our Spotify playlists.
Despite its enormous popularity, the music was not written from the hand of a famous composer like Mozart or Beethoven, as some might guess. In fact,
the story behind “Silent Night” is a humble one – much like the birth of the Christ child in a farm stable.
It only happened because an old church organ in a remote Austrian village suddenly stopped playing on December 23, 1818. There was to be no music that Christmas at the tiny church tucked away in the snow-covered Alps.
Despite his disappointment, Father Joseph Mohr felt comfort as he looked out on snow-covered streets that blocked any hope of repairing his church’s rusted-out organ in time. The stillness reminded him of a simple poem – Stille Nacht Heilige Nacht – that he had written years earlier about a similar peaceful and silent evening.
Inspired, he worked hurriedly with a musician friend to put his words to music for the next evening’s midnight Mass. With no organ, Father Mohr had to improvise. He would play the song on his guitar even though it was an unusual instrument for a church, especially back then on the holiest of nights.
It was an overnight hit. The six-verse song stirred such emotion among the small congregation that the simple tune eventually spread across Europe, playing in churches, music halls, royal palaces – and even battlefields. German, French and English soldiers on the front lines of World War I once came together in a temporary truce on Christmas Eve to sing the song’s hopeful message.
It was a simple poem composed out of necessity on the chords of an old guitar. Today, it has been translated into over 300 languages – a powerful testament to faith over fear, love, and the Holy Spirit.
Wishing you a silent night and many blessings this Christmas season.
Greg Syfan
President, Syfan Logistics