Oh No crib for a bed The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweethead The stars in the sky looked down where he lay the little Lord Jesus asleep on the head welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. That is the incomparable BJ Thomas who I think Head. one of the best voices Bar none out. There. I just loved his voice.
I mean, he was so recognizable. And I got to see him. in concert one time. When he came to Greenville, South Carolina, he was amazing. Amy Grant opened for him.
That takes you back a long ways, Dustin. She was a student at Furman then at the time, but she opened for him. But BJ. I mean, what a voice. I told you my friend Hank, who I played one of his songs last week, he could and he could sing just like that.
I mean, he could just nail it with BJ just. Away. You know, well, fair game. I'm not going to even try to do it. I love Christmas music.
I love this time of year. And I love all of the music. And thank you for letting me spend a little time with you today on this issue of speaking the language of caregivers. I want to close with a song that did just that. It transcended.
suffering transcended all of these things. Because it's Christmas, I'm doing this as our Christmas edition of Hymns That Every Caregiver Ought to Know. And I'm sure that every one of you all know this, but you may not know some of the back story behind this hymn. A young Catholic priest named Joseph Moore wrote this poem, and it was Christmas Eve in eighteen eighteen in uh the village of um Ober uh Oberndorf, Austria. And the organ at the church was unusable, and some say it was the flood damage.
From the local river, or the bellows were chewed up by the mice. I don't know. Either way, the instrument that normally carried the worship was silent. And rather than cancel the music altogether, Moore remembered um he remembered a poem he had written two years earlier while serving in a mountain parish there in Austria, and he brought it to Franz Gruber, Not to be confused with Hans Gruber from Die Hard. And he brought it with this simple request, sorry about that, set to music that he could sing with the guitar.
And they did the the the Catholic Mass there with the guitar, which was not exactly the way it was done back then.
Nowadays, we have guitars everywhere. I've even seen a banjo in a church before. You know, we. Had to stop for a moment, but no, I'm just kidding. But you didn't back then see a guitar, but they didn't have an organ that worked, and pianos were not as common as you might have thought during those time.
Okay, they really came out with the first it was called the piano forte, then it was shortened to piano, and then it had a lot of harpsichords, but mostly things were done with the organ. And the two of them, Moore sung tenor and Gruber accompanied on the guitar. Uh and they played this hymn for the first time. Silent. Night.
And um and it just you know it it became in so endeared in people's hearts.
Well You know, a hundred years later. Um a guy named Walter Kirchhoff. Kirshoff. Kirchhoff. K I R C H H O F F Kirchhoff.
He was a German opera tenor. who was trained for the concert stage, not not not for serving in trench warfare. But World War One was going on and he was pulled into the German army and he found himself on the Western Front in December of 1914. And it was mud and you know the trench warfare was horrible. And on Christmas Eve, um Kershoff began to sing.
And he's saying it in German first. I can't pronounce the German very well. My wife took German and she could say it, but I can't. Steele nacht, Heulig nacht, you know. All German sounds real harsh to me.
You know, it's like you're angry all the time. Um. But his voice carried across the still night there. That night. They said it was the the later description was it was just a still night.
Now, the Pope had been trying to go negotiate a cease fire and he failed.
So here it is, Christmas Eve, and this opera singer started singing Silent Night in German.
Now, the history accounts are varying.
Some say that he then repeated it in English. but others say that the British line across the field started singing it in English as well, and everybody was singing it together in their own language. Again, what did I say from the whole get-go of this show? Music transcends all these things. And they're singing Silent Night, it's Christmas Eve, and they all laid down their weapons and came out and talked to one another.
And for a moment They were not At war. For a moment they were Just People. They were just human beings. And Nobody really remembers who You know, said, Hey, get back to your fighting. And nobody remembers who fired the first shot once that was over.
History only remembers the guy that raised his voice to sing. that raised his voice to heaven. to sing. And in the process People put down weapons. Isn't that astonishing?
You know, the Pope couldn't do what this guy did. He was just he was just a s a tenor, out of place really. He didn't belong there on the battlefield. He belonged on the stage singing opera. But he used what he had in the midst of a horrific circumstance.
Gracie and I spent Christmas a couple of uh years ago in the hospital, two two Christmases ago. And it was Different. I promise you this. And I remember playing Silent Night. There's a grand piano down in the atrium at the hospital.
and I went and sat down at the piano and I played this. And there's a balcony from the second floor looking out over this atrium. And the security guards are down there. And some of them wanted me to play, you know, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas. Is you that kind of thing, and I want you to all know, and you'll be very proud of me.
I declined. Uh I wasn't going to play Bariah Carey. But I played Silent Night, among other things. But when I played Silent Night, I saw up in the balcony. A lot of patients and their families had come to the railing.
They're carrying IV poles.
Some of them in wheelchairs.
Some of them look pretty rough. and all of them Had this look on their face. They were just, um, it's really hard to describe. They were so disoriented. They didn't want to be there for Christmas.
I didn't want to be there. But, you know, Gracie and I, we spent a lot of time in hospitals, and I made peace with that before going down there. I had a feeling that we would end up staying that long, and we did. And I made peace with it. And I brought a keyboard into her room and I decorated her room, and she and I made the best of it.
And our son came up and spent time with us there at Christmas time. We didn't get to see our oldest son and the grandchildren there for that, but it was a special Christmas. And I wrote about this this week. In fact, if you go onto my Facebook page and join and be a part of that, you'll see the post on this. Uh that I'll do um for Tomorrow.
And and it 'cause it airs on Sunday. Um And you can see The story about this. But I played Silent Night and I watched these people in the hospital.
Some of them got pretty misty eye. They were crying. And they were so appreciative because it felt like it felt normal. For just a few moments. And it felt like Christmas.
and I thought, wow, the power of music That it can do this.
So I thought I'd end with the hymn that every caregiver ought to know: Silent Night. And Gracie does such an amazing job of this. And with your indulgence, I would like to close the program. With our version of Silent Night, and I've played this in I don't know how many churches, how many Christmas Eve services, but none quite as poignant as that Christmas Eve in a hospital atrium while patients and their families gathered around. Gracie and I wish you Merry Christmas.
We thank you for letting us spend some time with you and for listening to this program. And just remember. Emmanuel, he is with us. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.
Hopefortharegiver.com. This is Gracie and me performing Silent Night.
Some Silent night all is calm, all is bright around your virgin mother and child, so tender and mind sleep in heavenly peace sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, only night, Son of God, love your light breaking beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace. Jesus, Lord, at thy birth, Jesus Lord. Lord Jesus Lord Jesus Lord at thy birth Jesus Lord and thy birthday
