Silent Night . . .
This beautiful song had its birth at a village church in Oberndorf, Austria. At the St. Nicholas Church midnight mass on Christmas Eve in 1818, the assistant pastor, Fr. Joseph Mohr played his guitar as the accompaniment while he and Franz Xaver Gruber sang the lovely words.
Why the carol was written isn't known, although some speculate that the organ at the church wouldn't work. Either way, on the morning of December 24, Joseph Mohr visited the apartment of