Silent Night
Here’s one issue with “Silent Night”…
Does that name make any sense?
Because it’s so simple and sweet, “Silent Night” has a haze over it. For me, it still evokes the strongest sense memories of any song associated with Advent. “Silent Night” is a song that sets a scene.
I don’t just remember the tune; I remember the “vibe” of singing it at Christmas Eve or during a Christmas Day service. It’s easy to see the puffy coats bubbling off the pews or—if they manage to stay on—creating a pillow-fort-like barrier between you and your neighbor. There’s electro-static energy too, the frizz of too many Christmas sweaters. But all that’s the easy stuff compared to the threat of the candle-cone.
The candle-cone is that unique paper cone that holds a tiny candle, which you then hold aloft, lit, while singing “Silent Night.” But you also have to use it to light your neighbor’s candle, and that’s where the danger comes in. There are advanced lighting techniques you must execute quickly and flawlessly or dripping wax will consume you and everything you love. This is why you’ll hear a disclaimer about 20 minutes long telling you how to use your candle cone safely. The officiant will then dedicate this year’s candle-cone lighting to the previous four sanctuaries that burned down due to tragic candle-cone mishaps.
And this is kind of related to the confounding thing about “Silent Night.” Because when we sing “Silent Night” in church, it evokes all the peaceful feelings, all the worship that’s so absent from a Christmas season stuffed with obligations and frenzied thoughts about puffy coats and candle-cones. It is weird how well “Silent Night” works when we sing it, and it’s even weirder when you consider the premise of the song.
The night of Jesus’s birth would have been a lot of things, but it wouldn’t have been silent. Luke 2:1-20 provides the clearest placement in time and space: “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” A manger, with its straw cracking underneath and livestock bah-ing, was loud enough. That’s followed by the visitation of shepherds, an experience that so astonished them that they evangelized about what they’d seen “and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.” Angels come. On top of that, you had real live baby boy Jesus, whose silence might have lasted 10, 15 minutes, tops. “Silent” night seems ironic.
But “Silent Night” hints that it doesn’t want you to take the title literally. It does say, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.” But “all is calm, all is bright” indicates that something more profound than quiet time is going on. It calls out the quaking shepherds, the host of angels, and Jesus’s identity as Lord. This is the dawn of redeeming grace. It’s loud. Neither the gospel nor “Silent Night” are interested in decibel levels.
Maybe instead of just “silence,” we’re supposed to think of this silence as “peace.” It’s like a tuning fork struck firmly—the note sounds loudly while everything else stops to let it ring. As long as that note is playing out, it’s not silence. But what you hear is focused and clear in the same way that silence is. God’s that tuning fork and his Son is the note that plays out from it. This is the clarity described in Luke, and we find a version of it in our church pews when the carol focuses our praise together.
The silence that Silent Night describes is the peace of noise submitting to order. It’s not saying just, “Here’s a moment when everything was really quiet.” It’s saying, “Here’s a moment when everything else was silenced by something bigger than all the noise—the moment Israel had been waiting for.” That’s what the host of heavenly angels say: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” That’s what we sing: “Jesus, Lord at thy birth, Jesus, Lord at thy birth.”
So “Silent Night” doesn’t just make sense. It makes sense of what’s going on in Christmas. We glorify God, and he gives us peace. We aren’t asked to feel it at all times—the sheep will bah again, the straw will crunch, the puffy coats with zip and swish, and the babies (in the manger and in the church) will cry. But for a moment, we’ve got that one clear note calling out. In the carol, the manger is focused on Jesus, and in the church, our voices and energies are focused on praising him, waiting for him. The noise fades away, even as candle wax sizzles on the church floor.
Silent Night
Original text by Joseph Mohr. English translation by J. Freeman Young.
Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
'round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.
Silent night! Holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight!
Glories stream from heaven afar,
heav'nly hosts sing alleluia;
Christ, the Savior, is born!
Christ, the Savior, is born!
Silent night! Holy night!
Son of God, love's pure light,
radiant beams from thy holy face,
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.