The lyric from “Silent Night” is “Silent night, holy night,” so the stored answer is night.
The carol began in German as “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.” Joseph Mohr wrote the words in 1816, and Franz Xaver Gruber composed the melody in 1818. It was first performed on Christmas Eve in Oberndorf, Austria, reportedly with guitar accompaniment.
The English version most commonly sung today was translated by John Freeman Young in 1859. His translation uses only three of the six original German verses, which explains why some recordings contain different wording or additional stanzas. The phrase “holy night” is the song’s opening continuation, not “holy child” or “holy star.”
The carol has since become one of the world’s most recorded Christmas songs. UNESCO added it to Austria’s intangible cultural heritage inventory in 2011, and it has been translated into roughly 300 languages.