The U.S. tune for “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is named “St. Louis,” after the city. Lewis Redner composed the melody for Phillips Brooks’s Christmas text, and the tune became the standard American setting.
Brooks wrote the words in 1868 after being inspired by a visit to Bethlehem in 1865. He was then rector of Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia, where Redner served as organist. Redner reportedly completed the melody under intense time pressure for the church’s Christmas Sunday-school service.
The carol has different regional musical identities. In the United States and Canada, “St. Louis” is most common. In Britain and Ireland, singers more often use “Forest Green,” an English tune adapted by Ralph Vaughan Williams from a folk melody collected in Surrey. Thus, the city name identifies the American melody, not the biblical town described in the lyrics.