This picture is a digital composition. I started with a canvas were I changed the color to light brown to give an old paper appearance.
The music is a scan of original musical arrangement of the Christmas carol Silent Night and were added as second layer to the background
The third layer; the mother with child, is the scan of a charcoal scratch I did sometime ago.
Finally the black was painted in with art brush strokes; the stars from my private collection of clips and the text were added.

The Christmas carol Silent Night is the most recorded carol of all times with an amazing story of its origin. It is almost a miracle we now the song it all: the combination of coincidences as in a fairytale.
In 1818 a Joseph Mohr a poor priest of a poor Church in Oberndorf, Austria was preparing for a special Christmas Eve mass as he discovered that the old organ do to the extreme cold temperature wouldn't work. After struggling with the instrument for sometime he realized that he couldn't fix it.
He started to think what could be done to save Christmas.
He was a talented poet even had written before poems and song lyrics for special service so he looked for some of his older lyrics what could be used and sung by the choir with guitar music.
He found a little poem "Stille Nacht" [Silent Night] he had written two year ago but never used. The words were simple enough to learn in a short time but there was no music.
Moor asked his friend the school teacher Franz Gruber if he could write a melody easy to learn by choir. Franz wrote a beautiful simple melody in a few hours. More learned the guitar cords and the choir were rushed to the church to learn the new song. In the short time left Mohr and Gruber taught the choir the four part harmonies to the last two lines of each verse.
Christmas was saved.
A few weeks later Karl Mauracher came to fix the organ. He was told the story of the last Christmas and got interested in the song. He wrote down the lyrics and music he liked very much.
Thorough the 19 century here were many people in specialized jobs were traveling in Austria and Germany, most of them were also folk singers who improved their finances by playing and singing for special occasions on their way from town to town. The Strasser's a family of glove makers and folk singers meet Mauracher and learned the song. A few weeks later the Strasser's performed for a larch crowed what has gathered for a fair in Leipzig, Germany were King William of Prussia heard the song and requested it's Nations Cathedral choir to perform the song at his Christmas service.
This was the start for an amazing international journey around the world.
In December of 1839 the song was first performed in New York at the Trinity Church.
The song was popular allover the world but the origin was not recognized.
Only when Franz Gruber started a campaign in the newspapers providing the original poem and music the true origin was finally recognized. Too late for Joseph Mohr, who died penniless in 1848, before being recognized.
The first recording was done in 1905 by the Haydn Quartet. Since 1960 the song remains as the most recorded carol of all times world wide.