Glögg... Sweet christmas, hot (homemade d.y.o) wine with almonds, (and moonshine, hehe). God jul and a good yule to you! Take care and greetings from Jonas, Gothenburg Sweden.
The original is a French song, “Minuit, Chrétiens” (“Midnight, Christians”), sometimes called “Cantique de Noël.” “Minuit, Chrétiens” began as a French poem by Placide Cappeau, a wine merchant and leftist from Roquemaure, a small town in the Gard department of southern France. Educated by Jesuit instructors at the Collège Royal in Avignon, Cappeau penned the complex text in 1843 on the occasion of the restoration of stained glass at the local church in Roquemaure. His poem begins didactically, as if lecturing a crowd: “Midnight, Christians, is the solemn hour when the Human God descended to us, to erase original sin and cease the wrath of his Father.” Cappeau addresses the “powerful” of his day, “proud with [their] grandeur,” ordering them to humble themselves before God. Nothing of this discourse survives in the dulcet verses of the “O Holy Night” we sing today. Adolphe Adam, a composer of secular operas, set “Minuit, Chrétiens” to music in 1843 or 1847, according to two differing contemporary accounts. But many elements in “Minuit, Chrétiens” did not sit well with church authorities. Soon after it was written, the 1848 Revolution broke out in France, and Adam worried some observers by calling “O Holy Night” a “religious Marseillaise,” referring to the 1792 song adopted as the Gallic national anthem. I call it Adam's Christmas song. Tommy does it well.
