O Holy Night (words P Cappeau tr JS Dwight, melody A Adam; Roud 25609) Week 250, 28 December 2025

Описание: Continuing and concluding my theme for the rest of this year of (mostly) traditional songs of the Christmas season, of which there are very many.

“O Holy Night" celebrates the night of Christmas Eve going into Christmas Day, the night on which Jesus Christ was born in Christian tradition. (If I'd been less busy I'd have recorded it on Christmas Eve, but I had too many other urgent things to get done.)

“O Holy Night" originated as a French-language poem "Minuit, chrétiens", written in December 1847 by poet Placide Cappeau; it was set to music by composer Adolphe Adam shortly after, and Cappeau then referred to the completed piece as "Cantique de Noël". The English version, with small changes to the initial melody, was by John Sullivan Dwight in 1855.

The words are based on the Nativity of Jesus, as told in the Gospel of Luke, imagining the singer/narrator as a witness of the moment. The poem and song was generally anthemic, reflective of Cappeau's socialist and abolitionist views. The line "Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother" illustrates this and of course would have very much chimed with abolitionists in the US at the time (1855 is shortly before the American Civil War of 1860-65 and the US abolition of slavery).

I was slightly surprised (but pleased) to find that this song has a Roud number, which is often used as a short-hand for determining whether or not a song is a 'folk song' - but it does. This is one that I don't think was well known in the UK when I was a boy - I sang in a church choir as a boy treble for several years and don't remember ever singing it - but seem to have become fairly well known now.

I first sang this in a carol singing session at a folk singing weekend a couple of years ago, and the following year learnt and sang it in a choir. I haven't heard anyone else sing this in a folk singaround, but I sang it at my local one earlier this month.
The melody is a bit more complicated than many folk songs (no doubt because it was composed by an actual composer and was printed soon afterwards), and I don't know it well (in choirs I sing a harmony part), so I have sung this is a straightforward way, with no ornaments and only a few variations in rhythm to suit words, and one variation in melody in the third verse (second half of second line goes up instead of down). The usual time signature is 6/8 or 12/8, but I have also seen it in 4/4.
I repeated the B part of the last verse ("Christ is the Lord...") as that felt like a good way to end it. Despite its fairly recent composition and fixing in print, I've seen a few different version of the words of the song (very folky!) and picked the ones I liked best.

The words and music for this song are published in various songbooks and hymnals. This webpage has lyrics and a score:
https://hymnary.org/text/o_holy_night...

Wikipedia page on the song:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Holy_...