This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything

here on this show. And today, and we tell stories about everything here on this show.

And today and around the Christmas season,

we bring you special stories about a special time

and the stories behind the stories of our Christmas traditions.

And today we're going to focus on Christmas songs.

We love to sing.

And these are fascinating stories we hope will enrich your holiday celebration.

Ace Collins is the author of Stories Behind the Best Love Songs of Christmas.

Collins is an Ace at Song History, and he's here to introduce you to people you've never met, stories you've never heard,

and meanings you'd never have imagined.

Ears Ace.

One of the best Christmas songs is Oh Holy Night.

You can trace it back almost 200 years to France when a local priest asked a parishioner, was the commissioner of wines to write a poem for the

Christmas Eve service. He was riding in a carriage on the way to Paris. He wrote the poem.

He was so impressed with it that he took it to a friend of his who wrote operas. And he asked him,

can you write music to this poem? The man read the poem, said it's a beautiful poem,

but I think I'm not the right guy to do it. He said, no, no, you have this handle on, on music.

I want you to write it. So he put together some beautiful music to go with it. It was sung in a little

church in France that evening of Christmas Eve Mass, and people were so

impressed it became a tradition in that church, and within five years had spread clear across France.

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