Do you hear what I hear? Toddlers and Bombs
The story behind one of our new songs for the 2026 Christmas season.
Leon Schlienger was sick of war. Born in Alsace, France, he had been trained in classical music in Paris and Strasbourg, but after the invasion of France he ended up being drafted into the German Army . His loyalty to France meant that he worked as a double agent, constantly in danger and fear of discovery, and he was eventually wounded in action. When the war was over he emigrated to the USA, changed his name to Noel Regney (his original name spelled backwards with a bit missing), and met his future wife, Gloria Shayne. For a while, the two of them were a songwriting couple - she the words, he the melody - coming up with songs such as "Rain Rain Go Away" and "Dominique" (remember the singing nun?). Their life seemed peaceful, successful, and happy.
Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense 13-day confrontation in October 1962 between the USA and the Soviet Union over Russian nuclear missiles deployed to Cuba. The world watched in terror as the two nuclear superpowers stared each other down in a global Mexican standoff, their fingers on the big red buttons. For Regney, this must have been like PTSD, bringing back all those feelings of fear and anxiety he had known as a double agent. It must have seemed as though the war had followed him across the ocean. In despair, he set off for a walk.
“In the studio, the producer was listening to the radio to see if we had been obliterated" he wrote. "En route to my home, I saw two mothers with their babies in strollers. The little angels were looking at each other and smiling. All of a sudden, my mood was extraordinary.”
The glimpse of these toddlers filled Noel Regney’s heart with poetry. The little ones reminded him of innocent lambs. So the song begins, “Said the night wind to the little lamb.” As soon as Regney arrived home, he jotted down the lyrics, asked his wife to write the melody, and a Christmas classic was born; a poem of peace, written in a time of war, inspired by toddlers in pushchairs.
Regney and Shayne could not perform the song in public. For them, it was so poignant and emotional that they choked up and could not sing. "Our little song broke us up. You must realize there was a threat of war at the time." Instead, the song was first performed by the Harry Simeone Chorale, and later by Bing Crosby, who recorded his own version of it in October 1963. It became a massive hit, peaking at number 2 in the American charts. More recently, Whitney Houston recorded a classic, and the song has appeared on many Christmas compilations including the Bob Dylan Christmas Album (Bob in his gravelly-voiced era). Regney and Shayne preferred a recording by Robert Goulet, who nearly shouted out the line, “Pray for peace, people, everywhere.” This cry for peace is part of the final verse, the Fortissimo climax of the song, where Kate asks us to give it our all!
But is it really a Christmas carol? Sure, there are many images in common between the song and the Christmas story - the lamb, the child, the star, the king - but the stable, the manger, and the angels are absent. Regney's daughter insisted that her parents were not religious, and that the song is a parable of peace rather than a retelling of the Christmas story. The little lamb is surely the small child Regney saw, and what about the "Star with a tail as long as a kite"? Is it the star of Bethlehem, or could it be a nuclear missile?
So; a Christmas carol, or a 1960's song of the peace movement? Or a bit of both? You decide!
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