In Christmas of 1847, the same year that pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley, Catholics gathered for a special midnight Mass in Roquemaure, France. There, they heard the inaugural performance of "Cantique de Noël" (Christmas Carol), which would be translated into English eight years later as “O Holy Night.”
The lyrics to this new song came from “Minuit, chrétiens” (Midnight, Christians), a poem Placide Cappeau said came together on a six-hour stagecoach ride from Mâcon to Dijon a few weeks earlier on Dec. 3, 1847. The local parish priest, Maurice Gilles, had requested a new song be composed to commemorate a stained glass renovation at the church where Cappeau often worshipped.
Months after the song was released to a warm reception, the 40-year old Cappeau was drawn into the massive upheaval of the French Revolution of 1848, which overthrew the country’s monarchy for the 3rd time since 1792 and 1830. That involved becoming more adamantly opposed to inequality, injustice, slavery and advocating for a democratic republic.
This new carol felt sympathetically aligned with ideals of liberation, brotherhood and freedom; but for others, the song got too close to stirring revolution. Cappeau got labeled a “leftist,” a “social radical” and a “freethinker” — even eventually a “non-Christian” as he distanced himself from the Catholic church.
Adolphe Adam, who composed the now-iconic music to Cappeau’s new Christmas carol, was furthermore known for composing secular operas and had been raised in a non-Christian environment. An unfounded rumor began to spread that Adam was also of Jewish descent.
Some Catholic leaders in France distanced themselves from the carol — even omitting it entirely from some hymnals in the later 19th century.
A softer English translation
The controversy following this new carol didn’t end in France. English translator John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893), a Unitarian minister and journalist, made his home at the Transcendentalist utopian commune of Brook Farm, Mass., overlapping in his stay with author Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter).
Dwight softened some of Cappeau’s original lyrics. For instance, the French version spoke of Jesus interceding to “calm His Father’s righteous wrath.” But some objected to a portrayal of Christ emotionally at odds with a Father he’s seemingly trying to appease.
The reference was dropped completely by Dwight, who was uncomfortable with notions of a punitive atonement. Cappeau also made clear later in his life that he rejected a harsh “fear-based” God, saying “a God one cannot love is not a true God.”
Diverging from Nicene Christianity
Early objections also targeted the new Christmas carol’s departure from Trinitarian doctrine, by language suggesting that Christ was a separate being appealing to the Father.
Orthodox views of sin were also questioned in the original French: “Midnight! Christians, this is the solemn hour when God made man descended unto us, to erase the stain of original sin.”
Cappeau later stated that he did not believe in original sin, but the notion that Jesus removed original sin in the early text was theologically troubling to some. This was subsequently softened in the English translation to: “Long lay the world in sin and error pining / Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.”
Instead of “the entire world trembles (or thrills) with hope / On this night that gives it a Savior” in the French, the English version also proclaimed: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!”
‘Bow down’ all ‘boastful of your greatness’
Birthed as it was on the eve of another revolution, Cappeau and Adam’s song was praised by French poet Alphonse de Lamartine as “a religious Marseillaise” — referencing the 1792 song that became the revolutionary anthem of France.
This referenced how passionate and crowd-stirring the new carol felt — so much so that it generated worry among some. According to America magazine, some Catholic leaders criticized the song’s “militant tone and dubious theology.”
That’s likely due to the second verse, which was later softened to be:
The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger
In all our trials born to be our friend.
He knows our need, to our weakness no stranger.
Behold your King, before Him lowly bend!
But in the original, the pride of rulers was directly confronted:
The King of Kings is born in a humble manger;
Proud rulers of today, boastful of your greatness,
It is there that God preaches against your pride:
Bow down your heads before the Redeemer!
Importantly, rather than calling for violent opposition, the song’s appeal was to humility. “Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!” was in the original: “People, on your knees, await your deliverance / People kneel down, wait for your deliverance.”
This was also an appeal to faith in Christ as the true liberator: “O night divine, O night when Christ was born!” In the French, it read: “Christmas! Christmas! Behold the Redeemer!”
And while the English version famously concludes: “Let all within us praise His holy name. / Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we!” the original read:
It is for us all that He is born, suffers, and dies.
People, arise! Sing your deliverance: Christmas! Christmas! Let us sing of the Redeemer!
In any era where boastfulness is valorized — whether in kings or presidents or social media influencers — this represents a challenging, countercultural call to a higher way of being together.
Every chain broken
One of the strongest appeals of the song comes in the famous line “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother / And in His name all oppression shall cease.”
“To Dwight’s American contemporaries,“ commentator Delaney Coyne notes, “this would have been a radical political statement.”
In the original French version, this comes across even more directly — thanks to Cappeau’s strongly abolitionist views:
The Redeemer has broken every chain;
The earth is free and heaven is opened.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave
Love unites those once bound by iron.
Who can ever fully tell our gratitude?
By 1847, there were no legally enslaved people in the British Empire. But in France at the time, the country’s colonial empire had as many as 250,000 enslaved people from French Guiana to Senegal and Madagascar.
The carol was subsequently translated into English in 1855, six years before the U.S. Civil War, which helps explain why the song resonated so powerfully among Americans in the North (while some churches in the South refused to sing it).
Dwight had publicly lamented “three or four millions of our human brethren in slavery,” calling it “moral suicide” for the United States, according to biographer Bill F. Fawcett.
Rather than a historic artifact for a more benighted era, these appeals to more universal freedom have great relevance today. Although precise numbers are uncertain because of the hidden and illegal nature of modern slavery, current international estimates suggest that around 50 million people live in either forced labor, forced marriage, debt bondage, human trafficking, or similar conditions where a person cannot freely leave their situation.
‘For us all’
For all these reasons — the countercultural backgrounds of composers, lyricists and translators, and the potent message of the song itself — controversy followed “O Holy Night” from the beginning.
A distinguished Catholic journal (Revue de Musique Sacrée) openly assailed the song’s popularity in 1864, stating “It might be a good thing to discard this piece whose popularity is becoming unhealthy. It is sung in the streets, social gatherings, and at bars with live entertainment. It becomes debased and degenerated. The best would be to let it go its own way, far from houses of religion, which can do very well without it.”
Once the hymn had been softened and embraced around the world, the carol was often cautiously accepted where it once had been avoided.
There are no records of Cappeau, Adam or Dwight ever having children. Yet their joint musical creation has birthed hope, joy and faith in countless believers over nearly two centuries.
“O Holy Night” has been covered by a dizzying number of musicians over the years, from Johnny Mathis, Ella Fitzgerald, and Josh Groban, to Celine Dion, Tori Kelly and Lauren Daigle as a small sample. The song was voted Britain’s favorite Christmas carol for 9 years in a row, with it ranking second only to Silent Night in a 2022 Monmouth University Poll as one of the most beloved traditional Christmas hymns in the United States.
Christmas together in eternity
One of the most beautiful sentiments from the song comes from its least known adaptation by American musician Hart Pease Danks in 1885, “O Night Divine.“
After declaring, “O hearts that weep, in lonely sorrow pining / Behold, He comes with redeeming love to earth!” Danks imagines a future eternal day when the human family, who once mourned in grief, might gather to celebrate Christmas with loved ones in happiness, no longer to be separated again:
O night divine! When time shall cease for ever,
Our souls will tell of the dear savior’s birth:
When home at last we meet, no more to sever.
We’ll sing again of good will and peace to earth!
The light of hope now the waking world rejoicing
Will there be lost (absorbed) in a morn of endless day.