“…This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar…”

Margaret Atwood

Today is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is a cold, dark time, but one that has inspired celebrations for millennia. All the traditions that have grown over the last couple of centuries – of Tannenbaum and yule logs and candy canes and stockings filled with toys – come from the innate human desire to find light in darkness. Of all the joys of the holiday season that one that I enjoy the most is listening to Christmas carols.

There are so many wonderful songs of the season but there is one that, for me, towers above all the others. It was composed in 1818 by an Austrian schoolteacher named Franz Gruber and was first performed on Christmas Eve of that year in the parish church of Oberndorf. There are words, written by another Austrian, Joseph Mohr, who asked Gruber to devise a melody for them, but I am mainly concerned with the music today because last night I found an instrumental version of Silent Night that I recorded 30 years ago. The video is made up of some of the ghosts of my Christmas past.