Silent Night

Dear Editor,

Friends and familymembers tell me that "Silent Night" is one of their favorite Christmas carols.

According to Bill Egan, an expert on historic Christmas facts, it was first performed on Christmas eve in 1818.

A church named St. Nicholas, after the ancient bishop, was holding Midnight Mass. It was located in a small village known as Oberndorf in Austira.

St. Nicholas was having problems with its organ. Mice had gnawed through its bellows. Joseph Mohr, a young assistant priest from Mariapfair, Austria, had been transferred to Oberndorf.

He contacted Franz Xaver Gruber, who lived nearby in Arnsdorf.

Father Mohr asked Gruber to compose music for a poem he had written two years earlier.

They performed a duet with a guitar as an accompaniment. The church choir sang along with them.

The original German name of their song was "Stille Nacht, Helige Nacht," or "Silent Night, Holy Night."

For a number of years, the story of this wonderful musical composition was lost and forgotten.Meanwhile, composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were said to have written it.

Late in the 20th century, a piece of sheet music was found proving that Gruber had written the music for "Silent Night."

Helen Ruth Arnold,

Trenton, Nebraska