In brief, the song is a beautifully simple version of the traditional carol, overlaid with a radio news broadcast. At first, it's just the music -- two male voices and piano. Then one becomes aware of the announcer's voice, soft at first, then louder and louder until it dominates the airwaves. The news is uniformly bad: the Vietnam War, the Congressional Committee on un-American Activities, crime, protests -- all signs of a deeply divided society. The last thing one hears is: "That's the 7 o'clock edition of the news. Good night."
This combination suggests a basic contradiction between the bad news of the modern world and a carol about heavenly peace. The steady crescendo of the broadcast suggests that the carol (and perhaps the broader Christian tradition?) is incapable of dealing with the chaos of the modern world.
Taken in its entirity, though, the carol is more than capable of answering this dilemma. I've never thought that "Silent Night" had particularly brilliant lyrics -- it doesn't compare, for instance, to the solid gospel truth of "Hark the Herald" -- but the second and third verses contain the outline of the Christmas message: God has not abandoned us. Christ came into the world to deal with sin and the effects of sin -- including the things mentioned on the news broadcast. Si and Gar have dealt a hard knock to a sentimental Thomas Kincaid idea of Christmas -- but that idea needed knocking. The true message of Christmas is real hope in a world of real problems.
If I could make one change to the Si and Gar classic, I would add another verse: the second stanza of "Silent Night" overlaid with the bad news of 2008: financial collapse, economic uncertainty, terrorist attacks, ongoing conflict in the Middle East, natural disasters, famine, disease, crime, etc.
The second stanza ends with the line "Christ the Saviour is born."
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