Song of the Day 12/17: Kiri Te Kanawa, “O Holy Night”

If you’re not a church-goer you might not realize that, as pious as this song sounds, most Christian denominations do not have it in their hymnals. The reason is as old as religion itself: Religious intolerance.

“O Holy Night” is the English translation of the original French “Cantique de Nöel,” which despite its subject matter was deemed unfit for services by the Catholic Church in France because of its “lack of musical taste” and “total absence of the spirit of religion.” That’s obviously untrue, so what was their real beef? Simple: The lyrics were written by an atheist, and the tune was written by a Jew.

The song had its genesis in the mid-1840s when a priest in Roquemaure, a town outside Avignon, asked a local poet, Placide Cappeau, to write some verses to celebrate the renovation of the church organ. Cappeau got Adolphe Adam, a well-known theater composer, to write the tune, which debuted at a Christmas midnight mass in Roquemaure in 1847. It was an immediate success and its renown quickly spread. But years later Cappeau renounced religion and became a socialist, leading the church to ban its use.

That wasn’t the song’s only controversy. The third verse of the English translation of its lyrics in 1855 by Unitarian minister John Sullivan Dwight made it a favorite of abolitionists:

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

Though you won’t likely hear “O Holy Night” in a church, it’s been a favorite showcase for opera singers for a century. Tenors seem especially drawn to the tune, but it was written for a soprano. Kiri Te Kanawa does it justice.

A well-known modern take was Irma Thomas’ slowed-down rendition on “A Creole Christmas,” a various-artists collection released in 1990. Thomas herself didn’t like the recording – she thought it was too jazzy for the serious subject.