Photo: Frauke Riether, Northern Germany.

Many people are familiar with the Christmas carol, O Holy Night. But what they may not know is how the song came to be, and that its lyrics were penned by an atheistic winemaker, its music composed by a Jewish Frenchman, and its words translated into English by an American abolitionist. The song was banned for a period in France before becoming an anti-slavery anthem in the U.S. during the 1850s. 

 According to journalist Kali Holloway, events started in the 1840s in Roquemaure, a small town in the Rhône valley region. Placide Cappeau, who had followed his father into the wine business, was also known for the poetry he composed. Though a critic of the Catholic church, Cappeau was asked by the local priest (in either 1843 or 1847) to write a few stanzas in celebration of the town cathedral’s newly refurbished organ. He is said to have written the song’s words while in transit to Paris on business, with the biblical Gospel of Luke as inspiration. 

On the advice of the same clergyman who had commissioned him, Cappeau took his completed work—then titled “Minuit, Chrétiens,” or “Midnight, Christians”—to Adolphe Adams, a composer of some renown. Adams, who was of French-Jewish descent, arranged the music, and the song was newly christened as "Cantique de Noel.” The carol would make its world debut, with opera singer Emily Laurey belting lyrics, during Christmas eve midnight mass at the Roquemaure church.

Though "Cantique de Noel” would quickly become a French Christmas favorite, it was later denounced by the French Catholic church—a reported consequence of Cappeau being an avowed atheist and socialist, along with the discovery that Adams was Jewish, not Christian. 

"Cantique de Noel” would make its way across the Atlantic, however, to John Sullivan Dwight, a white American abolitionist, Unitarian minister, musician and classical music aficionado who published a magazine called Dwight's Journal of Music.

Portrait of John S. Dwight of Boston, Massachusetts, by Thomas Ryan in 1899.

Not only did this American writer–John Sullivan Dwight–feel that this wonderful Christmas songs needed to be introduced to America, he saw something else in the song that moved him beyond the story of the birth of Christ. An ardent abolitionist, Dwight strongly identified with the lines of the third verse: “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.” The text supported Dwight’s own view of slavery in the South. Published in his magazine in 1855, Dwight’s English translation of “O Holy Night” quickly found found favor in America, especially in the North during the Civil War.  (Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas, Zondervan.)

O Holy Night, despite being banned in its home country, slowly became a staple of Christmas and a song of powerful protest. To this day, it continues to be a song of redeeming love and hope. May chains continue to break and oppression cease, around the world, today and forever.