One Silent Night, Long Ago

It was Christmas Eve in France in December of 1944 during World War II . One 20-year-old American G.I. had the assignment of guarding a train station along the border of France and Germany, where his battalion was stationed. The young soldier was half a world away from his girlfriend and family in Pennsylvania, and was not very happy about the assignment and the lonely holiday ahead.

A young German family lived in an apartment above that train station on the border of the two countries that were at war. With the Americans patrolling the French border and the Germans patrolling the German border, this family was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The resilient family was friendly and got to know the soldiers surrounding their home on both sides, even the Americans who by that time had learned enough German to communicate with them a little.

The American soldier was settling in for a long night when the 12-year-old daughter of the family greeted him from the window of her apartment. It seems that he might have a little company after all on this holiday. They talked a little, and then the young man thought of a way to celebrate the holiday even in this most unlikely time and place.

He began to sing:

Silent Night, Holy Night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child
Holy Infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

The little German girl responded:

Stille Nacht, heilege Nacht
Alles schaft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilege Paar
Holder Knabe mit lokkigem Haar
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh.

She had sung Silent Night back to him in German, and it moved the young soldier to tears. They continued like that, with the young man singing a Christmas carol in English, and the little girl singing it back to him in German. That little girl did not seem like the enemy to the soldier that Christmas Eve so long ago. They were just two kids singing the same holiday songs, just in different languages. He never forgot that Christmas Eve or the little girl.

That young soldier was my father, and he was telling me this story for the very first time last week, one week before our celebration of Christmas Eve this year.

Last month my husband and I were perusing the sheet music at Colony Records in New Year when I came across a copy of Schubert’s Ave Maria. We bought the sheet music that day so I could sing it for my father on Christmas Eve as one of his presents, with my husband accompanying me.

I knew that my father loved Ave Maria more than any other piece of music. I knew that he loved his daughters and all our accomplishments, and would love to hear me sing this song, even if I was no Nana Mouskouri. But I had no way of knowing how significant singing for my father on Christmas Eve would be.