Memories of the world’s best-loved carol

“SILENT Night, Holy Night” – how evocative are the lyrics of this simple but beloved carol that is sung in more than 300 languages around the world.

“All is calm, All is bright” – to me these words conjure up images of icy, starry, nights; perhaps a wintry desert where huddled shepherds watch their flocks; perhaps a snowy Christmas card scene, a scene like the Austrian village that might have inspired the composition of the song, nearly 200 years ago. Some versions of the story say that the author of the lyrics, a young assistant pastor, Josef Mohr, was reminded of a poem he had written one night when he gazed down from a hilltop at the sleeping village of Oberndof.

It was December 23, 1818, and the poem, which celebrated the birth of Christ, would make a lovely Christmas carol, he decided.

The next day he took it to the church organist, Franz Xaver Gruber. In just a few hours, Franz had set the poem, ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’, to music, composing a simple melody that could be played on a guitar. And that is how the world heard it for the very first time.

That Christmas Eve, the carol that the English speaking world now knows as ‘Silent Night’ was sung in the village church, by Josef and Franz, to the accompaniment of a guitar. Little did they know their heartwarming composition would spread throughout the Christian world to become perhaps the best loved traditional carol of all times.

My father could play ‘Silent Night’, very badly, on the little home electric organ he’d bought at the Rand Easter Show. Over the years, he bought lots of stuff at various Rand Easter Shows.

He was a sucker for a slick sales pitch and the Rand Easter Show salesmen and demonstrators could spot him a mile off. At home my mother had a kitchen drawer filled with unused gadgets he had bought there over the years – the sort of tools that could turn a radish into a rose, make stripes on a cucumber or transform half a tomato into a star.

Then there were his hobbies that were inspired by visits to the Rand Easter Show. Some were – mercifully – short lived. Although he acquired all the literature at considerable cost, his project of breeding chinchillas for profit (I kid you not!) never quite got off the ground.

He did buy a kit to tumble semiprecious stones and for a year or two many of our friends and family received then-fashionable tiger’s eye pendants as gifts. He also kept a hive of bees in our back yard for a number of years before he grew tired of that hobby, too.

He added considerably to his stock of well-used, must-have DIY and power tools by snapping up show bargains and he never lost his passion for cultivating roses, inspired by a visit to the massive halls of rainbow coloured roses at the Rand Easter Show. He loved the queen of flowers right until he died.

Fortunately his musical aspirations were fairly short lived. He had never played any musical instrument in his life before but as he listened with rapt attention to the salesmen’s description of the fool-proof teach-yourself-to-play-the-organ system his company had devised, we all knew he was hooked. Sure enough, not long after the Rand Easter Show, a new home electric organ and a set of instructions on how to play it were delivered to our home.

My father’s attempts to master the instrument became the soundtrack to my matric year. Worse was to follow as the year drew to a close. It was Christmas Eve and the house was filled with aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbours.

Sometime that evening my father decided to round up all the children and teenagers for a carol singing session. For my siblings and me it was one of those excruciatingly embarrassing “Da – ad” moments, but there was no dissuading him.

He murdered ‘Silent Night’, the children and teenagers gamely trying to fit words to limping melody, but he was as pleased as punch with his performance and the rousing applause from the attendant adults.

Red faced and cringing we slunk away from the limelight, hoping our giggling cousins and friends would soon let us forget the whole awful incident. We didn’t know it then, but my father only had a very few Christmases left to share with his family.

“Round yon virgin mother and Child. Holy infant so tender and mild.” These lovely lyrics always make me think a young mother, cradling her new-born child and resting in the joyous after-glow of giving birth.

This melodious story of the birth of the Christ Child also reminds me of how precious are all our children.

My father only met two of his six grandchildren. He died not long after my second son was born. He was good with children and his grandchildren would have loved him. Grandparents are allowed eccentricities that are frowned upon in parents.

Had he lived to see them grow into teenagers, he probably could have easily coaxed his grandchildren into belting out Silent Night to his accompaniment.

“Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.”

‘Silent Night’ holds so many precious memories for me. It reminds me of extended family carol sing-alongs around the Christmas tree, the less talented among us making up for lack of musical ability with volume and enthusiasm.

It reminds me of Carols by Candlelight evenings under Margate’s famous palm trees, back when the children were young, the sound of the sea a counterpoint to the beautiful children’s voices.

It reminds me of flickering candles and the hallowed atmosphere of midnight mass in Margate’s stately St Margaret’s Church. ‘Silent Night’ reminds of Christmases past, present and still to come. And it always reminds me of my dad.