O Little Town of Bethlehem

O Little Town of Bethlehem is one since the end of the 19th century in the USA very popular Christmas song. It was first through the hymnals of the Episcopal Church spread, in the second half of the 20th century then also by interpretations of Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, Garth Brooks, the Golden Gate Quartet and others.

Genesis

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), at that time rector of Trinity Church (Church of the Holy Trinity ) in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA), wrote the text in 1868 under the impact of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he had taken 1865/1866. Brooks asked Lewis H. speakers, the organist of his church, to set to music the text for the Sunday School. Speakers reported later that he had this contract been postponed, in the night of Sunday, however, for he had promised the melody had appeared to him in his sleep an angel and had given him the notes.

Later versions

The text has been changed several times by Brooks and later editors. In the printed versions mostly lack the the fourth place in the originally fünfstrophigen stanza, because in it Christ as the "son of the Undefiled " ( son of the Immaculate ) was addressed. The emergence of the text falls into a period of intense debate about the promoted by the Oxford Movement orientation of the Anglican churches in Catholic traditions, which so strongly won in the U.S. ground that it was in 1873 for the removal of the Reformed Episcopal Church. The name of the Virgin Mary as " undefiled " therefore contained considerable potential for conflict, as they recalled the already formed in the later Middle Ages, but only in 1854 the Pope proclaimed as specifically Catholic dogma doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The verse was therefore either omitted in the printed versions, or the word " undefiled " ( unstained ) was replaced by "mother mild" ( good Mother ).

Singable versions also exist in Spanish, French, German and other languages.