I’ve been doing a teensy bit more research on Christmas carols-  One fascinating fact I learned about Silent Night is that the words were writeen, set to music, and first performed all in one day! 

Apparently, on the morning of Christmas Eve 1818, the organ of a small Austran church broke.  The assistant parish priest, Father Joseph Mohr, wrote a new hymn for the evening service and took the words to Franz Gruber to write accompanying music for the guitar!  (who knew?)  The two of them sang the new hymn, Silent Night, that night with the choir joining in on the last two lines.

Here’s a little bit of “MyTown Pride” with a recording of David Archuleta performing Silent Night a capella. I’ve never met the boy, but some of my students used to go to school wth him. That makes me almost famous, right? The beginning of this recording is incredibly ridiculous with crazed fans shouting all around, but for some reason, that just comes with the territory of David Archuleta. At any rate, he has a beautiful voice, and this is a fun short video of “Silent Night.”