A sacred/secular note, regarding “Minuit, Chrétiens,” or “O Holy Night,” the staggeringly beautiful French carol. In my atheist obduracy and hardness of heart, I first told myself that my response to the song was to some homages to it by Pierre Degeyter in the music he later wrote for “The Internationale,” or to the antislavery lyrics, which were emphasized even more in the 1855 English translation by the Unitarian John Sullivan Dwight of Brook Farm, “O Holy Night”: “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother, / And in His name all oppression shall cease.”

All that’s there, I think, but the whole story is even better:

The author of the lyrics was Placide Cappeau (1808-1877), a resident of Roquemaure, located a few miles north of the historic city of Avignon. He was a commissionaire of wines, and an occasional writer of poetry. It is said that Cappeau was about to embark upon a business trip to Paris when the local parish priest asked Cappeau to write a Christmas poem. On December 3, 1847, about halfway to Paris, Cappeau received the inspiration for the poem, "Minuit, Chretiens."

When he arrived in Paris, he took the poem to the composer Adolphe Adam, an acquaintance of M. and Madam Laurey who were friends of Cappeau. Adam was at the peak of his career, having written his masterpiece, Giselle, only a few years before, in 1841. He was also the composer of over 80 stage works. Adam wrote the tune in a few days, and the song received its premier at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve 1847 in Roquemaure.

Notwithstanding its intrinsic beauty and initial success, the song was later attacked by churchmen in Cappeau's native France. The reason was not because of the nature or subject of the song. Rather, the attacks were based on the reputations of the lyricist and composer. Late in his life, Cappeau was described as a social radical, a freethinker, a socialist, and a non-Christian. Indeed, he adopted some of the more extreme political and social views of his era, such as opposition to inequality, slavery, injustice, and other kinds of oppression.

And the composer, Adolphe Adam, was Jewish. That, plus his reputation as a composer of light operatic works and ballets, was deemed incompatible by those churchmen with the composition of a Christian religious song. One French bishop denounced the song for its "lack of musical taste and total absence of the spirit of religion."

[From “The Hymns and Carols of Christmas: O Holy Night,” http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/o_holy_night.htm ]

This is the best attribution news I’ve heard since Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks showed in Way Up North in Dixie, that “Dixie” was composed by one of the Snowdens, a family of former slaves who settled near Mt. Vernon, Ohio.

French lyrics and MIDI file

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/NonEnglish/minuit_chretiens.htm

English lyrics and MIDI file

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/o_holy_night.htm