Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
O Holy Night
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of our dear Savior's birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night divine, O night, O night divine!
When editor Boyce asked his Cosmos contributors to write about their favourite Christmas songs, it took me only two seconds to respond. For those who know me, my choice might seem strange.
I don't recall the first time I heard O Holy Night, but I suspect that the first time I truly paid attention to it, it was the inimitable Kate Smith that I was listening to. I have heard other singers - including Pavarotti, Josh Groban and Celine Dion - present their renditions of this song, but for me no-one ever came close to Kate Smith. With one exception!
At the Foster Memorial a couple of weeks ago, the Ladies of the Foster gave their annual reading of A Christmas Carol. When the reading was over, Jane Loewen raised her wonderful soprano voice in O Holy Night. The effect in the fabulous acoustics of the Foster was overwhelming and, once again, I was moved almost to tears by the magic of the music and the words.
I have the same reaction almost every time I hear it. Surely, no other Christmas song or carol captures the magnitude, the wonder, the promise - and, indeed, the peace - of the Nativity story as we have come to know it.
As much as we enjoy listening to children perform carols at Christmas concerts, O Holy Night is one best left off the program. Of the myriad songs written about that event, this above all calls out for a pure operatic voice to soar on the wings of the simple yet majestic music and, in so doing, carry the listener along with it. It would seem impossible for anyone to sing - or hear - O Holy Night without entering a near-rapturous state themselves.
The accepted history of the song has the words written by Frenchman Placide Cappeau in 1847 in a poem called Minuit, chretiens. The poem was set to music the same year by Adolphe-Charles Adam, best known for his 1841 ballet Giselle and other operatic works.
Now come a couple of Canadian connections.
The English version which we sing today - which is not a direct translation of the French - is by John Sullivan Dwight, a Canadian-born Unitarian minister who was was editor of Dwight's Journal of Music.
There are also stories - which cannot be indisputably confirmed - that Canadian-born inventor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden played the tune on one of the first ever radio transmissions. The story has it that on Christmas Eve, 1906, Fessenden sent out a short program from Brant Rock, Mass., to ships at sea. The program included his playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. If the story is true, then O Holy Night would have been the first music ever broadcast over radio. To those early listeners, it must have seemed as though the music was coming from Heaven itself.
