Martin Luther modeled this hymn’s opening on a popular German folk riddle song, Ich kumm aus frembden landen her, in which a traveling singer steps into the marketplace bearing news from distant lands. Luther turned the conceit toward heaven itself: the singer becomes the angel stepping out of the far country of heaven into the shepherds’ fields to announce the Savior’s birth. First published at Wittenberg in 1535 under the heading “A children’s song on the Nativity of Christ,” the hymn began life not in the church but in Luther’s own home, where by family tradition a boy dressed as the angel would sing the opening stanzas to the household gathered around the cradle of the infant Margaretha, and the family would answer in the stanzas that follow. Luther first let the household sing it to the tune of the old folk song, but rather than let the Gospel travel on a melody remembered from the tavern, he composed an entirely new tune of his own, published in 1539, and that tune is the one sung today. As the Hymn of the Day, it places the congregation itself in that Wittenberg front room, hearing the angel’s news proclaimed as a family’s own.