A Little O Holy Night

My absolute favorite. I have sung it at Midnight Mass a couple times and almost cry every time. Merry Christmas to you guys. Many blessings!

I heard that holy music in a church when I was 10, and I cried. God bless you!

This moving and profound Christmas Carol has a very interesting history. As well as a place in the history of communication technology.

The lyric was written in 1847 by the French wine merchant and poet Placide Cappeau at the behest of a priest. The priest wanted a poem for Christmas services that year and Cappeau used The Gospel for inspiration. Cappeau titled his poem, "Minuit, chrétiens" (Midnight, Christians). Cappeau was pleased with his poem and he decided to add music to it. He asked his friend, Adolphe Adam, who was Jewish, to set his poem to music. Cantique de Noel was a hit.

The Church hierarchy denounded Cantique de Noel as lacking a "spirit of religion" when Cappeau's socialist views became radicalized and they found out that Adam was Jewish. Regardless, the French people continued to sing this moving carol and it did not die out. Some years later, an American visitor, John Sullivan Dwight, brought the carol home and he wrote a translation based on Cappeau's poem into English: "O Holy Night." Fast forward to the birth of broadcasting over the airwaves, at the dawn of the 20th century.

In 1906, on Christmas Eve, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, who had workded with thomas Edison, broadcast a largo by Handel, then "O Holy Night" played by Fessenden himself on the violin, and ending with his reading the passage from the Gospel of Luke: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will [2:14]". Morse code had already begun to be transmitted previously; a few years before. However, Fressenden's broadcast was the first to transmit music and voice for all to hear. And the rest, as "they" say, is broadcast history.