Good morning everybody . This is Danny Mac . I just want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and , unfortunately , I really wanted to do a new episode for you today , but I'm just not quite up to it yet . So I've got a great Christmas carol for you . It's the story behind O Holy Night . I think you'll enjoy it . Have a Merry Christmas everyone .
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right . I am Danny Mac and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day . So grab your cup of coffee , sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right .
This week we're going to share some of our earlier episodes about the Christmas carols , so as part of that , today's episode is about O Holy Night . The story of this song is really quite interesting , and it all began back in 1847 when a parish priest in France decided he wanted a new poem for Christmas Mass . So he asked the best poet that he knew .
It was a man by the name of Placide Capo , who was not particularly a church-going man , but he agreed to the project . The next day , placide had to go to Paris , and so while riding in the coach he penned the words for Cantique de Noël .
Placide , looking at the words , decided that this was really too good to just stay in poetry form , so he decided to get some music written for it as well . He approached his friend fellow by the name Adolphe Charles Adams for some help .
Adolphe was a man of Jewish heritage and the words of Cantique de Noël represented a time and a person that he didn't particularly believe in or understand . And yet he quickly went to work and provided a score that went with these words absolutely beautifully .
The entire hymn was finished , ready to perform just three weeks later at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve . A few years later , the song was translated into English and John Sullivan White heard it . He decided that he wanted to introduce it to America , and it wasn't just because it was about Christmas .
You see , john Dwight was an ardent abolitionist and he strongly identified with the lines of the third verse that said Truly he taught us to love one another . His law is love and his gospel is peace . Chains shall he break , for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease .
This portion of the song really supported Dwight's own view about slavery in the South . So he published O Holy Night in his own magazine , not only to celebrate Christmas , but also to share his beliefs about the evils of slavery . The song immediately was widely celebrated and accepted , especially in the North during the Civil War .
And then one of the truly amazing things about the song took place in 1906 . A man by the name of Reginald Fessenden , who was a 33-year-old university professor and who had worked extensively with Thomas Edison , did something that many people for a long time had believed to be impossible .
He had produced a new type of generator , and when Fesden spoke into a microphone , for the first time in history a man's voice was broadcast live over the airwaves . And for this auspicious occasion , reginald chose to read these words . And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed .
He spoke with a clear and strong voice , hoping that it would help this signal to get carried out as far as possible . There were shocked radio operators on ships and astonished wireless operators at newspapers , who would normally sit and listen to the Morse code messages . Instead , now they heard over their tiny speakers .
The professor reading these words from the Gospel of Luke Fessenden was probably unaware of the sensation he was causing on ships and in offices , he couldn't possibly have known . The men and women were rushing to their wireless units to catch this Christmas Eve miracle .
But after his recitation of the birth of Christ , fessenden picked up his violin and played O Holy Night , which became the very first piece of music ever to be sent by a radio wave . When the carol ended , so did the broadcast , but not before music had found a new medium that would take it around the world .
Since that first time when O Holy Night was sung at Christmas Mass in 1847 , it has been sung millions of times in churches in every part of the world , and from that very first musical broadcast by radio waves , the carol has become one of the entertainment industry's most recorded and played spiritual songs .
It is an absolutely wonderful Christmas hymn and I'm going to leave you with a version of it that I really like . This one is sung by the acapella group Home Free , and I have the YouTube link for it there in your show notes today , so you can listen to Home Free singing this on YouTube . I think you will really enjoy it .
Here's O Holy Night , fall on your knees . Oh , hear the angels' voices . Oh night divine , oh night when Christ was born .