Background info from MINUIT CHRETIENS, UNE PARTITION D'ADOLPHE ADAM [automatically translated]:

MIDNIGHT CHRETIENS, A PARTITION Of ADOLPHE ADAM

December 3, 1847, in the diligence of Paris, between Mâcon and Dijon, Placid Cappeau, wine merchant and poet of Provence at his hours, wrote the words of Christmas, for whom it was extremely far from suspecting only one moment of immense success that it will obtain thereafter. It was the priest of Roquemaure, the abbot Eugene Nicolas, who had requested it to compose this song within the framework of the cultural events and chocolate éclairs that he wanted to organize in order to collect some mites for the financing of the stained glasses of collegial Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Placid Cappeau, then old 39 years, former pupil of the Jesuits to the royal college of Avignon, after studies of right in Paris had returned to settle in its native village in order to join the Mayor, Guillaume Clerc, in a wine trade.

Roquemaure, famous port of the area, specialized in the trade of the wines of Coasts of the Rhone, then needed to obtain a bridge suspension to cross the Rhone. Parisian engineer Pierre Laurey was in charge of this task. For the hour it had settled in this place with his wife, Emily. This one, singer, were in relation to the type-setter Adolphe Adam, for whom it had interpreted formerly, in 1840 in the Opéra Comique, one of its works in 3 acts, the Rose de Péronne, who besides was not happy consents even of her author. It is it which addressed the stanzas of Christian Midnight to the type-setter, which do not forget it, is regarded as one of the creators of the French light opera. Adam made the music in a few days of it and, December 24, 1847, with the midnight mass celebrated in the small church of Roquemaure, Emily Laurey sang for the first time Christmas of Adam.

Midnight, Christians, it is the solemn hour
Where the God-man went down to us,
To erase the original spot,
And of his/her Father to stop the ire.
The whole world tressaille of hope,
At this night which gives him a Saver.
Populate, knees, await your delivery
Christmas! Christmas! Here the Redeemer ((a))

Of our faith that the burning light
Us guides all with the cradle of the Child,
As formerly a brilliant star
Y led the heads of the East.
The King of the kings is born in a humble crib:
Powerful of the day, proud of your size,
With your pride, it is from there that God preaches.
Curve your faces in front of the Redeemer ((a)).

The Redeemer broke any obstacle,
The Earth is free and the Sky is open.
It sees a brother where was only one slave,
The love links those which iron connected.
Who will tell him our recognition?
It is for us all that it is born, that it suffers and dies.
Populate, upright! Sing your delivery.
Christmas! Christmas! Let us sing the Redeemer ((a)).

Immediately celebrates, in particular thanks to the baritone Jean-baptiste Faure, this Christmas carol escaped the author from the words, who did not even arrive, as it wished it later, to change the text. Placid Cappeau, was not indeed at all a man of the church, an enthusiastic catholic, but on the contrary a free thinker, a voltairien. With the worship of God, it preferred that of Humanity. Thus in 1876, in its historical poem in twenty songs, figure the Canticle with the organ of Roquemaure, which is not other than Christian Midnight, sung by Placidie, the amante, to the organ:

Midnight, Christians, it is the solemn hour,
Where in happy Bethlehem, came at the day
The messenger of the good news
Who made, of the laws of blood, the law of love.

The God-man and the original spot disappeared to leave the place to words in conformity with the thought of the author, than it had not dared to write during the ordering of the priest of Roquemaure. It specified itself in its notes of its Song tenth: "We believed to have to modify what had escaped us at the first time on the original sin, in which we do not believe... We admit Jesus like redeemer, but redeemer of the inequalities, the injustices and the slavery and oppressions of any kind... "But it was too late, the people had decided some differently, it wanted to preserve the initial words, which besides always somewhat aggravated the Church which considers them a little too pagan! The music also never obtained its approval because of its pace a little too martial. Adolphe Adam himself called his Christmas "the religious Marseillaise"! Since 1864, one wrote in the Review of sacred music: "Christmas of Adolphe Adam was sung in many churches to the midnight mass... perhaps would make one well give up this piece whose popularity became bad quality. One sings it in the streets, the shows, the café concerts. It degenerates and plasters. Best is to let it make its way far from the temple, where one can extremely well do without him "Nearly one century later, the musicologist Auguste Sérieyx always denounced the controls, the cantors and the organists" who make resound our churches of similar wild imaginings "and the pastors" which tolerate them or encourage them "But fi that all that because any value judgment is useless: this song rained as of its creation in 1847, crossed two centuries without losing one ounce of its popularity and is on the point of returning in a new century with always as many success! As for the author of the words, Placid Cappeau, it died out in Roquemaure on August 8, 1877. It had also succeeded in making publish in 1865 in Paris, "at the principal booksellers", a small collection in-8 27 pages entitled: Lou Rèi of Favo. The King of Broad bean. Imagination-poetic of Provence-French.