The traditional Christmas song “Silent Night” has been covered by thousands of artists, including Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey, Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra.

Over 200 years ago, an Austrian priest teamed up with a schoolteacher to perform the first rendition of ‘Silent Night.’ Little did they know that it would one day be sung in over 300 languages.

While “Silent Night” may have been performed for the first time 200 years ago, Mohr had penned the poem a bit earlier, amid a trying time in Austria’s history at the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Since 1818, “Silent Night” has been translated from German into hundreds of languages. There are about a dozen different translations just in English, with an 1850s version the most widely ...

One of the world’s most famous Christmas carols, “Silent Night,” celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2018. Over the centuries, hundreds of Christmas carols have been composed.

But while Mohr wrote his lyrics in 1816, “Silent Night” would not be performed until Christmas Eve 1818, when Mohr gave his poem to a friend, Franz Xaver Gruber, a teacher and organist in ...