<\/p>\n
Silent nights are an uncommon occurrence in The Big Apple, but on a frosty evening in late November, a group of people are gathered at a Colonial-Era churchyard cemetery on the grounds of New York City\u2019s Trinity Church. There\u2019s a nip in the air, but it has zero effect on the feeling of warmth and fellowship amongst the crowd standing under the bright lights of the giant towers of the city\u2019s Financial District.<\/p>\n
On this night, Lower Manhattan\u2019s nocturnal cacophony of howling sirens, honking car horns and the bustling bleat of holiday shoppers will be stilled for a moment or two. The occasion: an outdoor concert celebrating the bicentennial of one of the world\u2019s most beloved Christmas carols, “Silent Night.”<\/p>\n
For most people “Silent Night” is associated with crooner Bing Crosby. Crosby originally recorded the song to help raise money for the St. Colomban Foreign Missionary Society in 1935<\/a>. The song was an instant hit, but when Crosby performed it again in his hit film Going My Way<\/em> in 1944, the song became an instant classic engrained in the holiday season psyche of Americans, and most of the English-speaking world.<\/p>\n The roots of “Silent Night,” however, are not American, they\u2019re Austrian. The song we know and love today, was initially inked as a six stanza poem by a young assistant priest from Salzburg named Joseph Mohr in 1816<\/a>.<\/p>\n Central Europe, for those of you unfamiliar with early 19th-Century socio-political history, was still reeling from the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars, political upheaval and economic misery. Then, in 1815, an Indonesian volcano named Mt. Tambora popped its earthly cork, blanketing the skies across the globe with a deadly ashen shroud causing an eco-catastrophe that darkened the skies, dropped temperatures and destroyed crops, leaving millions hungry and destitute.<\/p>\n With rampant famine and poverty raging across Europe, and one of the coldest, darkest years in recorded history, the following year, 1816, would be remembered as the \u201cYear Without a Summer.”<\/a>\u00a0It\u2019s not a stretch to imagine how this terrible time may have affected a young priest, and inspired him to write a poem about peace on earth.<\/p>\n Not long after the final bell has tolled on Wall Street\u2019s nearby stock exchange, and the masses of financiers, bankers and traders have gone home for the night, three smartly dressed women make there way through the Trinity churchyard gathering and turn to face the crowd in front of a stately stone monument belonging to Alexander Hamilton. The women are dressed in magnificent, brightly colored, traditional Austrian dirndl dresses. One of them, carrying a guitar, leads a group of angelic youth choristers dressed in deep red choral garb.<\/p>\n The three women, who are known in Austria as The Kroll Family singers, are joined by another tall Austrian soprano, and along with choir ensembles from Trinity Church they begin to serenade the audience and the departed souls memorialized on the weather-beaten tombstones in the churchyard, with heavenly renditions of \u201cStille Nacht\u201d (“Silent Night”) in its original German before performing it in a host of other languages.<\/p>\n The relevance of the site chosen for this holiday concert is not coincidental. According to local history, the very location of the performance on this evening is the same one used by another Austrian singing troupe, The Rainer Family Singers. The Rainers, popular songsters in their native Austria, traveled all the way from the soaring peaks of the Tyrollean Alps to introduce Americans to their beloved song of peace way back in 1839, the first time “Silent Night” is believed to have been sung in North America.<\/p>\n The beautiful Christmas hymn The Rainer Family carried across the Atlantic was almost 20 years old when it was first heard on American shores. Not long after penning what would become the lyrics to “Stille Nacht,” Mohr moved to work as an assistant priest at a small church in Oberndorf, a small riverside town near Salzburg. While there, he asked a local teacher he had befriended to compose a melody for the poem he\u2019d written. Franz Xaver Gruber took up the task, and on Christmas Eve, 1818, the song UNESCO has recognized as a part of the world\u2019s Intangible Cultural Heritage<\/a>, was first sung at the St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Inspired by the knowledge that this beautiful carol was created in a country I have come to know intimately over the years as a ski journalist, I decided to make a pilgrimage to its place of birth. So I added Salzburg and Oberndorf to a pre-Christmas ski trip I had been planning, and on a chilly December morning one week before the song\u2019s 200th anniversary, I boarded a train bound for the birthplace of “Silent Night”<\/p>\n After of week of sunshine and hero snow in Austria\u2019s spectacular Innsbruck, Oetztal and Arlberg regions, I pulled into Salzburg\u2019s main train station on a crisp, sunny morning. Salzburg, if you\u2019ve never been, is one of the most beautiful fairy tale cities on earth. Sitting in the shadow of the majestic Hohensalzburg Fortress, on the shores of the Salzach River, Salzburg and its colorful cluster of ornate Baroque buildings, towering churches and cobblestone squares is the jewel of the Alps.<\/p>\n Salzburg\u2019s favorite native son is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and his presence is felt throughout the city, but nowhere more than on Getreidegasse, where tourists line up to take selfies in front of the bright yellow building he was born in. Any visit to Salzburg is a feast for the senses, with the music of Mozart always in the air, and the scent of chocolate Mozartkuglen (a dark chocolate marble sized ball filled with marzipan, pistachio and nougat) never far away, but in December during the Advent period it seems like the city turns the sensual dial up to 11.<\/p>\n Christkindlmarkts (Christmas Markets) can be found all over the Salzburg, in fact it\u2019s hard not to come across one during this festive time of year. The scent of Gluhwein (mulled wine), roasted chestnuts, and the sounds of Christmas songs played by street musicians, outdoor choirs and random carolers is an unforgettable feast for the senses.<\/p>\n Unable to resist the sights, sounds and smells of the city\u2019s Christkindlmarkts, I thought a little journey of yuletide fancy would be a nice way to begin my pilgrimage to Oberndorf later that afternoon. I took a stroll across the romantic Makartsteg Bruck, which is known as Salzburg\u2019s bridge of love because of the thousands of tiny locks lovers have decorated it with. It led me into the Sternbrau Advent Market, a secret, off-the-beaten-path Christkindlemarkt a local friend had once shown me. This market is tiny compared to Salzburg\u2019s two main and much larger Christkindlmarkts (Domplatz and Residenzplatz) in the city\u2019s old town, but the stone arches and medieval-covered walkway onto Getreidegasse have an irresistible old world charm that must be seen firsthand.<\/p>\n After scoring a couple of Mozart figurine tree ornaments and coiffing a delicious apple flavored Gluhwein at the Stern Advent Market, I made a beeline for the Residenzplatz market where another local friend had told me I could find a decorative cowbell from a stand with a real live blacksmith on site. Upon finding said smithy, and convincing the friendly Austrian blacksmith to let me have a few whacks on the anvil he had set up, I waltzed over to a nearby stand with the most tasty and colorful pretzel shaped meringues my eyes had ever seen, and promptly gorged myself on two of these heavenly, scrumptious egg white-based confections.<\/p>\n