Due to poor planning, I don’t have much time this morning.
One of the things I’m doing is getting ready to present the chapel message. Our schedule left this date out, and when a volunteer was needed, I jumped at the chance. I love giving chapel messages.
Today’s message is about the literal translation of the original words for Silent Night. The words are awesome! If we sang these words instead of the traditional English ones, Silent Night would be my number one favorite Christmas carol:
Silent night, holy night
All is sleeping, alone watches
Only the close, most holy couple
Lovely boy with curly hair,
Sleep in heavenly peace!
Sleep in heavenly peace!Silent night, holy night,
To shepherds it was first made known
Through the angels’ “Hallelujah”
Sounding forth loudly far and near:
Christ the Savior is here!
Christ the Savior is here!Silent night, holy night
Son of God, Oh how laughs
Love out of your divine mouth,
Because now the hour of salvation hits us
Christ, in Thy birth!
Christ, in Thy birth!
The last verse makes my eyes leak almost every time I read it. I hope I don’t cry while I’m talking in chapel.
A Cappella sang this version for Christmas at Concordia. Now I know where those words came from.
Dang it. Now my eyes are leaking. Those are lovely words.
Have you read a copy of The Storybook Bible? It’s tagline is ‘every story whispers His name’, and for the nativity story it talks about the star and the angels coming from God, who was the proud papa shining his spotlight on his baby boy. I love those images. “He’s here! He’s here!”
Blessings on your chapel!
Here are the original SIX stanzas to “Silent Night.” Years ago it was shortened to three stanzas: 1, 6, and 2. The theory is that ‘someone’ wanted to make this beautiful carol more secular. I love the “missing” stanzas, as well.
http://www.stillenacht.at/en/text_and_music.asp
I love those stanzas too! Thank you for linking to them 🙂
I did see that in my research, but only covered the three verses that we (almost) sing in English.
The other verses are powerful though:
This is a wonderful gift to give your school community, Brad. (You do know that some versions of our verse one would replace the curly haired boy line with “who were in a stall in Bethlehem”, ja? I learned both versions as a young girl – not sure which is “correct”.) Whenever something translates from its original tongue, a thought or two seem lost – you’ve helped us recapture some of that for this classic. Several of us former co-workers were recently reminiscing about how we always enjoyed your middle school chapels – I’m sure this weeks was amazing as well.
This thread is reminding me of my visits to Frankenmuth, MI, where Bronner’s has a model of the chapel in Oberndorf where Franz Grube allegedly wrote/played it on guitar that first Christmas Eve. Now myeyes are leaking…
Awesome!! 🙂