The Surprising Story Behind 4 Classic Christmas Songs
By Movieguide® Contributor
The holiday season is a time to enjoy Christmas songs both new and old, but do you know the history behind some of your favorite Christmas hits?
“Oh Come All Ye Faithful”
The origins of “O Come All Ye Faithful” date back to the 1700s. It began in Latin as a song titled “Adeste Fidelis,” believed to have been written by John Francis Wade between 1740 and 1743.
The song was sung along with Silent Night by English soldiers during the Christmas Truce of 1914. Scot Hanna-Weir, a music professor at Santa Clara University, said, “For the most part, the soldiers on each side volleyed carols back and forth between the trenches, but when the English soldiers started in on ‘O Come All Ye Faithful,’ the Germans joined in the singing to the original Latin text of the carol, ‘Adeste Fideles.’”
“Silent Night”
Silent Night was written in 1818 by Franz Gruber, who based it on a poem by Joseph Mohr. “The story goes that Mohr came to Gruber with the poem on Christmas Eve and asked him to set it to music for that evening’s mass,” Hanna-Weir explained. “The carol was performed that night with guitar because the church’s organ was damaged by flooding.”
“The song might have remained a one-night wonder, but when the organ repairman Karl Mauracher arrived [to the service], he heard the song and took the sheet music home with him to Tyrol, an area known for its choirs,” the Smithsonian said. “The choirs began singing the tune, and eventually it was translated and spread around Europe. In 1839, it came to the United States when the Rainer Family Singers — think of THE SOUND OF MUSIC but more Dickensian — toured the New World.”
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“Jingle Bells” began as a song titled “One Horse Open Sleigh” and actually wasn’t even a Christmas song. In fact, some believe it started as a Thanksgiving song (which, let’s be honest, we need more of). History.com reported, “The carol made its debut at a Thanksgiving service at the church of one of the composer’s family members. That composer, by the way, is none other than James Lord Pierpont — the uncle of Gilded Age financier John Pierpont Morgan.” Today it sits at No. 16 of Billboard’s 100 top holiday songs.
“White Christmas”
“White Christmas” was written between 1937 and 1939 by Irving Berlin. Originally written for Broadway, “‘White Christmas’ made its debut on Christmas Day, 1941, when Crosby sang it on a radio show sponsored by the Kraft Company — just 18 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The following year, when Crosby performed for American troops overseas, ‘White Christmas’ was the most-requested song.”
“I hesitated about doing it because invariably it caused such a nostalgic yearning among the men, that it made them sad,” Crosby said in an interview. “Heaven knows, I didn’t come that far to make them sad. For this reason, several times I tried to cut it out of the show, but these guys just hollered for it.”
What is your favorite Christmas song? Whether new or old, we can all appreciate music that uplifts the birth of our Savior this Christmas season.
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