SILENT NIGHT

 We NEED Christmas! 

Today, I want to talk about "Silent Night" and  dig a little bit deeper into it. 

Yesterday I mentioned some of the history of it, but today I want to get into the lyrics and find the spot that I think most resonates with people and makes it such a popular song.

SILENT NIGHT AND THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

I forgot to mention yesterday that when Father Joseph Mohr wrote the words as a poem a couple of years before, Europe had just emerged from the Napoleonic Wars. These ideas of silence and peace really resonated with people. Father Mohr included much of that in the poem. 

PAINTING THE SCENE

He paints the night of Jesus’s birth right from the start.

“Silent Night, holy night. All is calm” 

Already he calls to mine a certain level of peace and stillness in the night. 

 

“all is bright”

Now he adds the star and we have  starlight coming down. The beautiful background is set. 

"Round yon virgin, mother and child”. 

The mother, of course, is Mary. 

“Holy infant so tender and mild” 

The infant is obviously the Christ child.

THE PHRASE THAT PAYS

Here is the key phrase that I think means everything to everyone.It is one that is repeated for emphasis. 

“Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.” 

A PEACE THAT PASSETH ALL UNDERSTANDING

A few days ago, we talked about "peace on earth"  and how you want to find peace in your life. But "heavenly peace", that is a peace that passes understanding. It is a level of peace on order of magnitude about what we generally consider peace.

Obviously, if you're a person of faith, "heavenly peace" really resonates with you. But even if you're not a person of faith, we oftentimes use “heavenly” as an adjective to describe something above and beyond whatever the adjective is describing. So this is a peace that is incomprehensable! 

WHO SHOULD "SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE"

So, in the song, on the surface it seems like we, the singers,  are telling the Christ Child to "sleep in heavenly peace". But I think that what is also being said  to us is now that the Christ Child has arrived, we too should put our trust in Christ and enjoy "sleeping in a heavenly peace".

Think of that peace that a newborn has lying there all cuddled and snuggled into their blankets. They do not have any clue of the things they should be worried about or could potentially be worried about. A total deep sleep. 

Can you imagine how much sleep you would get tonight if you could go to bed knowing  that there was absolutely nothing for you to worry about? Do you see why this resonates? 

SILENT NIGHT AND THE CANDLELIGHT SERVICE

One of the reasons why “Silent Night!” is my favorite sacred Christmas song is because I think back to all the Christmas Eve services that I've attended, particularly in the church that I grew up in. And I know a lot of churches do this, where they will sing “Silent Night” while they have candlelight as part of the Christmas Eve service. And that's what we did. 

We would all get candles and light the candles while we'd start singing “Silent Night”. Every time we got to the end of the verse, the ushers would turn out one more light in the church. It would get darker and yet still light because we had the candles burning. That went on until we got to the last verse in which all the lights were out and we were lit entirely in candlelight.

When we would get to the end of the last verse, the pastor would say, “Let's sing the first verse again.” For this verse, the accompaniment (organist or pianist) would stop playing and hold their candle up. There we would sing in pure candlelight, in pure harmony (this was a Methodist church, we had four part harmony in our hymnal), a cappella, just our voices raised together in unison.

When we finally got to the end of that verse, the pastor would wait just a few seconds and let all the reverberations in the church fade away. In that absolute silence he would say in a hushed whisper, “Christmas has come.” 

That was just a taste of the heavenly peace. Everything felt safe. Everything felt warm. Everybody felt unified in community. 

SEEK THE HEAVENLY PEACE

I was going to talk about "Silent Night" closer to Christmas, but I decided to do it now because that heavenly peace is something that we can take advantage of today. Picture in your mind a peace where nothing bothers you, everything is taken care of. You feel  safe and secure, unified with your community. That's what we're aiming for. 

So just keep that peace in mind. And when things get stressful, envision that peace. Live that peace. Be that peace. 

Hey, guys, we NEED Christmas. Have a great day.

STILL, HE KNOCKED

We need Christmas! Today, I want to talk about an unusual song I came across called “Still, He Knocked”. 

I love and am a big fan of Christmas music. I own a bunch of Christmas music. I’m hoping to  eventually build a collection that will just blow people's minds. And so I've heard a lot of different songs sung in a lot of different ways.

UNFAMILIAR SONG?

The other day I came across a song that wasn't too familiar to me.The first two lines went like this: 

“Still, he knocked. 

How he knocked?” 

I was sitting there scratching my head and asking if it was Christmas song? Was it a sacred song orsecular song? Was it Jesus knocking? Santa knocking? Some neighbor you don't know knocking?

I didn't understand it. And I get it, songs speak to different people in different ways. But this one I just felt like it wasn't even speaking my language, literally. 

LIKE A FOREIGN LANGUAGE....BECAUSE IT WAS

You see, “Still, he knocked” was really “Stille Nacht!”. Which if you don't know what that is, it's “Silent Night!”  "Silent Night!” was originally written in German.

CHRISTMAS EVE 1818

Let's flashback to Christmas Eve, 1818, in the town of Oberndorf, Austria. There is a young priest named Joseph Mohr. Two years prior, Joseph had written these words in a poem. But on that Christmas Eve day he wanted it set to music. 

So he went to a nearby town to meet with composer and organist Franz Xaver Gruber. And he asks Franz if he could set it to music.

Now, I can just imagine Franz’s response, he's like, “Sure, I could set that to music. When do you want it?” Father Morh responds something life “If you could have it by tonight's Christmas Eve mass, that be great.” 

But you know what? Franz did.  “SIlent Night!” got its music and had its first public performance on the very same day. And it went on to be one of the greatest Christmas songs of all time.

WHY SO POPULAR?

Why was this song so popular? Well, I definitely have some theories on that, but we're going to get into that tomorrow. We're going to dive into the lyrics and I'm going to show you what I think is the part that most resonates with people. 

DON'T LEAVE EMPTY-HANDED!

But I don't want to leave you empty-handed. Wouldn't it be a great party trick if you could actually sing the first two lines of “Silent Night!” in the original German? It's really not that hard. Let me show you.

Take "Still, he", combine the words together and add an “sh” in the beginning. “SHtilly” 

For “knocked” instead of ending it with a “D”, end it with a hard “T” and really emphasize the word “KNOCK-T”. “SHtilly KNOCK-T” 

For  “how he knocked ”, instead of “how he” think of this  in terms of sports. "How he" becomes "high league". And then add the word “KNOCK-T” again. 

Put it all together and you get "SHtilly KNOCK-T, High League KNOCK-T" (“Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht”)

And there you have it. You can sing the first two lines of “Silent Night!” in German, which of course, you know, means.... well, you know what that translation is. 

Don't forget, we need Christmas. Have a great day!

"PEACE ON EARTH"

 

Today, I want to talk about the phrase “peace on earth”. We hear that all the time at Christmas. 

PHRASE ORIGINATES IN THE BIBLE

It comes from Luke 2:14. The angels have already told the shepherds of the coming of Christ, and now they are praising God with the multitude of hosts saying “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, good will toward men!”

WHAT IS PEACE ON EARTH?

That's a great sentiment. But I think too many of us think of "peace on earth", meaning to rid ourselves of war and violence. While that would be great and there are probably very few people that wouldn't love a world without war and violence, I think we do ourselves a bit of a disservice by not thinking of peace in other ways.

STRESS HAPPENS

One of the reasons I am talking about this is because the other day I was busy doing work, trying to get these podcasts out, and trying to plan some decorations for the holidays. I was  getting really stressed out and it left me less than peaceful. I found myself losing my temper, raising my voice, and generally being grumpy.

How ironic is it that because of all the stress around the holiday, in which we want to celebrate peace, we are being far from peaceful. 

PEACE CAN BE MUCH MORE

One of the reasons I started "We Need Christmas" is because I was tired of all the people yelling at each other during the midterm election in November (2022). Peace can certainly include us not yelling at each other. There is nothing politically that will change between now and the January 1. You can yell in the new year if you want.

But, for now,  let's just be peaceful. Let's just be human. Let's just talk nicely to people. 

PEACE WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

It is the same thing if you have family or friends with whom you're fighting. Let's really try to have some more patience during the season and  try to be nicer and more peaceful. Just keep that word “peace” in your head. Be peaceful. That should be your goal. 

INNER "PEACE"

It's also peace within yourself. Many of us have things going on that are  stressing us out or  really making our lives difficult. 

Think through it, use some of the mindset stuff, but just try to be peaceful. 

Take a deep breath and  again, keep that word, “peace” in mind throughout this holiday season.

GO IN PEACE

So the next time you hear “peace on earth”, remember, it's not just getting rid of war and violence. But it's also getting rid of all the turmoil and stress that we bring upon us during this time. 

Go in peace, my friends. 

JINGLE BELLS

We need Christmas. Today, I want to talk about the Christmas song, Jingle Bells. I don't know about you, but it has been my favorite non-religous song my entire life. I absolutely love it! There are a couple of facts you may not have known about it. 

THE FIRST RECORDING

Jingle Bells was first recorded in 1889, and it was recorded on one of Edison's cylinders, actually making it the first holiday song ever recorded.

BROADCAST FROM SPACE

Fast forward to 1965 on the Gemini VI rocket up in space, middle of December. Two of the astronauts decided to have a little bit of fun. They radioed Mission Control and reported an unidentified object orbiting the Earth around the North Pole and working its way south. They then told Mission Control they were going to try to capture some data from it.

What they actually did was pull out a small harmonica and some bells they had smuggled on board and proceeded to play Jingle Bells for Mission Control, making it not only the first holiday song, but the first song period ever broadcast from space. 

IS IT A CHRISTMAS SONG?

The funny thing is, Jingle Bells really isn't a Christmas song. When it was originally written, it was written about just being a sleigh ride. A bunch of people getting together, having a ride through the countryside and the snow and the bells. It really had nothing to do with Christmas. 

PLAGIARIZED?

In fact, some musicologists have looked at the original, which was written by James Pierpoint, who, as it turns out, was ultimately the uncle to J.P. Morgan. The musicologists think that what he did was take lyrics from other popular songs of the day, mashed them together, added a melody to it and sold  and published it quickly so he could get a bunch of cash.

That my be cynical, and whether it's true or not, it really doesn't matter. 

THE SONG RESONATES

Because, out of all the songs that were in circulation  back then, something resonated in this song and made it popular. By the 1870s and 1880s, it was a regular staple in people's holiday songs, and it went on to be the number one most popular secular Christian song of all time.

SO WHY "JINGLE BELLS"?

Why am I talking about Jingle Bells besides the fact that I really like it? Well, late last week, my mother-in-law sent me a video clip, a social media clip, and it was a video from 2009 from a PBS Christmas special done by Andrea Bocelli. He is an Italian tenor who sings both opera and pop songs.  He had just put out a Christmas album and this special was helping him promote that album. 

ENTER THE MUPPETS

Well, at one point they introduced the Muppets to come sing with him. When they introduced the name of the song as Jingle Bell, the Muppets were all excited. “Oh, Jingle Bells. I know that song. I love that song.That's my favorite song.” 

ANDREA SINGS...SLOW

Well Andrea starts singing "Jingle Bells" he does a slow operatic version. The Muppets look at each other like, “Is this the same song? It's not right. This isn't right.” They eventually figure out that he's singing the right song, but way too slow in their mind. 

MUPPETS TRY TO HURRY HIM UP

So Kermit the Frog stops him and says, “Andrea, no, no. It's supposed to be faster like this.” And the Muppets start singing it upbeat. 

Andrea listens for a little bit, and then he resumes singing in his slow pace. But he's modified it ever so slightly so that it's actually falling within the quiet spaces of their upbeat version, giving a nice syncopation and putting together a really beautiful version. 

It was awesome! It was great. And it got me thinking kind of traditions. 

DIFFERING TRADITIONS

See,  to the Muppets, the tradition was to sing "Jingle Bells" fast. To Andrea, the tradition was to sing it slow. But what they did is blend the two traditions together to make something even greater. 

THE CHALLENGE

That's my challenge to you. This holiday season, you're going to run across hundreds, if not thousands of different traditions, things that may seem foreign to you. But they are traditions that are important to others. Everybody's got traditions they really love and hold on to. 

I want you to open your mind and learn about those traditions, appreciate those traditions and expand your knowledge of Christmas. It's great to learn about people's traditions. 

BE READY TO BLEND

Now, if you find yourself in a household or a new relationship or even a workplace where there's a couple of traditions that seem to be butting heads, see if you can find a way to blend the two traditions in such a way that you make something even greater. Because that would be in the spirit of Christmas!

TOMORROW....TREES

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about Christmas trees. I know that took me a real long time to get to that. 

Hey, guys, don't forget, we NEED Christmas and have a great day.

THANKSGIVING

We need Christmas! That being said, today's post is actually going to center around Thanksgiving. 

HAPPY VETERANS DAY

Before we dive into that, I want to wish a happy Veterans Day to all the veterans in the United States. Thank you so much for your service. 

THE BIG DEBATE

Last year around this time I released a video that was a spoof of the old MovieTone newsreels.

THANKSGIVING FANS RESENT CHRISTMAS DECOR BEFORE THANKSGIVING

It brings up a really good point. You have people who love Thanksgiving and really resent Christmas being celebrated before they've had a chance to celebrate their holiday. 

I get it. My neighbors had a whole bunch of Halloween decorations up on their houses. But November 1st, the day after Halloween, several of them switched over to Christmas.

Really. No lie. Literally the day after Halloween they had their Christmas decorations up. For me, as a fan of Christmas, I loved it. But my wife is a big fan of Thanksgiving, so she didn't like it too much. 

A THANKSGIVING / CHRISTMAS COMPROMISE

Around here we have a special arrangement. I love to listen to Christmas music. In fact, I've been listening to Christmas music on and off since July.  Ok, it may have  been June this year.

But I don't listen to Christmas music when my wife is around. I can listent to it down  in my office or when I'm in my car. But if she is somewhere where she can hear it, I turn it off and put on something else because she doesn't want to hear Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving. 

It is the same thing with Christmas decorations. One of the reasons I do so many projects centering around Christmas is that it gives me the opportunity to decorate my office. But upstairs, you won't see Christmas decorations up right now. We  generally don't put them up until Thanksgiving or the day after to avoid Thanksgiving to be overshadowed. 

If you have a favorite holiday, the last thing you want is people to be moving on to the next big holiday and not even paying any attention to it. 

THE THANKSGIVING / CHRISTMAS CONNECTION

Here's the thing. Thanksgiving and Christmas are very closely related. They share so many similarities. 

BOTH CELEBRATE SEASON

First off, both of them have to do with celebrating seasons, right? At Thanksgiving, we're celebrating late fall. We have  the orange and the brown, reminiscent  of  the changing leaves. We have pumpkins and hay and scarecrows, all things related to late fall. 

Christmas falls  right after the start of winter. So a lot of the imagery centers around snow and renewal and cold and long nights. We are celebrating the season as part of Christmas.

BOTH INVOLVE GATHERING WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Both holidays involve gathering with family and friends. We visualize it as getting together in a warm environment with reddish lights and with fireplaces going. Everything looks so cozy and homey and we're together and hanging out with each other. 

AND WE EAT

And of course, we also eat.... a LOT. I don't even know why you would try to even think about losing weight during November and December. It's simply not going to happen. 

BOTH CENTER ON GRATITUDE

Both holidays center around gratitude. With Thanksgiving, it is literally in the name. We’re giving thanks for the blessings and everything that we received throughout the year. 

Christmas is also about gratitude because we give gifts to show people how much we appreciate them. And, as I mentioned yesterday, in the sacred traditions, we're giving thanks for the gift that God gave us in Christ, and ultimately the gift that Christ gave us in His crucifixion, resurrection and our salvation. 

So both holidays center around gratitude. 

BOTH ARE BIG ON TRADITION

They also are big holidays for tradition. Everybody has really strong traditions around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Whether that's how you decorate, the things you do, the things you eat. Everybody has traditions they really want to follow and integrate together because it reminds them of the holidays in the past and even from their childhood.

THE LITTLE SECRET

Here's a little secret. Thanksgiving, Christmas and really New Year's are all part of one giant arc to celebrate the end of the year. 

Thanksgiving gets us thinking about the blessings, the things that have happened to us this year. We appreciate our family and our friends, the connections that we have. It opens our heart up to appreciating everything about the Christmas season: peace on earth, good cheer, helping others, the renewal, and starting fresh.

That leads us into New Year's when we celebrate the beginning of a brand new year. 

So from Thanksgiving through Christmas through New Year's, we are getting ready to end one year and start a brand new year. Of course, it then  makes no sense to me why I find January to be one of the most depressing months of the year! It don't really last long, does it? 

TODAY'S CHALLENGE

My challenge for you today is this. Look at the traditions involved in Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Discover for yourself that end-of-year cycle. Realize that you're setting up to appreciate the year and getting ready to start a brand new year full of hope.

NEXT WEEK

Starting next week, each day I'm going to go into one individual tradition, story, Christmas carol or symbol and talk about it and how it can influence us during this season. 

Thank you for joining me on this journey and let's just have a great time here for the rest of the year. Remember, we need Christmas!

Have a great day!

SACRED VS. SECULAR

Especially this year, we need Christmas! 

Today, I want to talk to you about sacred vs. secular traditions. As I mentioned on yesterday's introductory episode, this series, the “We Need Christmas” series, is going to deal with both. And we're going to find the commonalities between the two. 

WHERE DOES THE WORD "CHRISTMAS" COME FROM?

"Christmas", the word itself comes from Christ's mass.  This was a celebration of the Eucharist in the church in honor and remembrance of the birth of Jesus Christ. So this puts Christmas clearly on the sacred side of things. 

SECULAR TRADITIONS DEVELOP

However, over the years, a bunch of traditions have developed in and around Christmas that don't quite have as much sacred meaning to them. They are more accessible to people who are either not of the Christian faith or just don't have any faith at all.  Yet, they are attracted to the holiday because of the beauty and the spirit of the holiday. 

HOW "SECULAR" FEELS ABOUT "SACRED"

Some of the people who strictly celebrate the secular side of things absolutely hate it whenever any of the sacred gets involved. But I would say the majority of people in the secular side of things understand the origin of the holiday, and they don't have any problem at all if others want to appreciate and celebrate the sacred side of things.

HOW "SACRED" FEELS ABOUT "SECULAR"

Likewise, those people that celebrate the sacred traditions. There are a few of them that really hate all the secular traditions and despise it and wish they didn't exist. But I would tend to say most of the people that embrace the sacred side of the traditions also kind of like some of the secular traditions as well, and blend the two together. And why not? The reality is the traditions are not as far apart as you think. 

IS SANTA TOTALLY "SECULAR"?

Take, for example, Santa Claus, and we'll go into this deeper down the road. But Santa Claus, you would think of as being a purely secular side of things. Right. But if you trace some of the origin back from the legend and the story, some of that traces back to Saint Nicholas.  Definitely on the sacred side of things. 

IS GIVING GIFTS TOTALLY "SECULAR"?

What about gift giving? With Black Friday and numerous sales, TV commercials that start in October telling you what you need to buy for Christmas. All the "must have gifts" you are told about. Clearly, gift giving is on the secular side of traditions right? 

Until you think about it from the sacred side that Jesus was God’s ultimate gift to mankind, right? The birth of Jesus was a gift. And ultimately, as Jesus went through his crucifixion and resurrection, he gave us the gift of salvation. So from a sacred side of traditions, giving a gift is sort of a remembrance of the gifts that God gave to us and the gift that Jesus gave to us and salvation. So that's just two examples of things that you may think are fully, squarely secular that can also have a common thread in the sacred.

TODAY'S CHALLENGE

So my challenge to you is this: if you're on the secular side of things, look at some of the sacred traditions and see what in them you can find to help you become a better person. This could be ideas, ideals, or things that  exist in the words, poetry and hymns. Find those takeaways from the sacred that work for improving your life.

If you're on the sacred side of things, look at some of those secular traditions and think about the connecting roots to the sacred that are within them. 

THE ROOT PURPOSE OF THIS SERIES

Here's a secret. That's what the series is about. It will be showing you each side of these traditions and connecting them together. Because in our lives, that's where we all should be right now.

We may have different ideas. We may have different thoughts. But we need to focus on what connects all of those together. 

FOLLOW "WE NEED CHRISTMAS"

You need to follow the series. The posts are available in video form and blog form. Go to https://NEEDChristmas.com. You'll be able to see the videos and  read the blog posts there. I even have a few resources there for  kids and for  grown ups of different books, movies, games, and music related to Christmas. 

If you want to follow on social media, that's great. I want you to follow SoloPro. That's my production company. Follow SoloPro and you'll be able to see all these videos as they come out. 

• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/goSoloPro
• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/solopro-nsp/
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/GoSoloPro
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/teamsolopro/
• TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@teamsolopro
• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@needchristmas

WRAP-UP

This is the time of year we can all start to get together, appreciate and enjoy the holidays. 

Come back tomorrow and I'll be talking about Thanksgiving, for those of you who think I forgot all about it. 

Hey, guys, we need Christmas and have a great day.