More than two hundred years ago, on a Christmas Eve in the small Austrian town of Oberndorf, someone wrote six lines that begin:

Silent night,
Holy night,

Someone added music.

All is calm, all is bright…

All was not calm and bright. It was 1818, and the Napoleonic Wars had left behind a Europe of ravaged cities, economies, peoples; twelve years of fighting, and a cropless 1816 adding famine to misery. People were starving and freezing and tired.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

The song was played to a congregation, who went to sleep, strangely, still tired, starving, freezing, but… The following year, they sang it. The Christmas after, an organ repairman took the score to another village. The people there sang. They had a Christmas market. Travelers passing through—pilgrims, migrants, artists, traders—crisscrossing Europe, en route to Russia, England, across the Atlantic…

Silent Night, tomorrow,will be sung in more than 300 languages and dialects, across religions, cultures, borders. Where there are surely people freezing, starving, exhausted. Of faith and without it, by choice or circumstance. Of every age and existence. The words—which were declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO—could be a prayer,

or wish, or hope,

human, just human,
for peace, not in heaven, not necessarily forever, just…

It happened once, on a Christmas Eve during a World War, in the space between German and British trenches, more than one hundred years ago. Rifles stopped firing, shells exploding. All was silent, all at once. All was calm. It did not snow. Maybe that song was sung.

Somewhere, a brass band. At some point, someone crossed the space and said Merry Christmas to someone. In another language. Someone lit a Christmas tree. Some people shook hands. Calm and bright. Some shared cigarettes, plum puddings. There was peace, forever or not, just… the people sang, and then they were tired, so they slept.