How ‘Midnight on Christmas Eve’ Became An Heiligabend, La Veille de Noël and Du kommer juleaften
One story, four languages, and two songwriters who realised their mother tongues could hold the same heartbreak.
There’s a special kind of silence on Christmas Eve.
Not the soft, movie kind with snow and fairy lights, but the silence that wraps around you when you realise you’re going back to a place that once hurt you – or standing outside a door you promised never to knock on again.
That silence is where “Midnight on Christmas Eve” was born.
And somehow, that silence speaks German, French and Danish now too.
The Night the Song Found Its Languages
The original version of Midnight on Christmas Eve was released on November 14, a duet between me and Kael Daemon. We wrote it for the people who feel pulled back to an old love on a night that’s supposed to be about family, light and miracles.
When the song came out, something interesting happened behind the scenes:
as we kept working together, we realised we weren’t just two artists from different places –
we were carrying the same languages.
- I have my roots in Danish and a long love affair with German and French.
- Kael, in his own life and work, is also deeply connected to these exact languages.
It felt almost too on-the-nose: a song about returning to the same door “just one more time”, and two writers who kept circling back to the same shared words and grammars.
So we asked ourselves a simple question:
What if this story could exist in the language that feels like “home” for more people than just us?
That question became three new versions:
- “An Heiligabend” (German)
- “La Veille de Noël” (French)
- “Du kommer juleaften” (Danish)
All three will be released on December 5.
Why Not Just Dub the Lyrics?
We didn’t want to do a literal, line-by-line translation.
Language doesn’t work like Google Translate when it comes to heartbreak.
Every tongue has its own way of holding guilt, desire, regret and hope.
German knows how to be blunt and poetic at the same time. French can be tender and sharp in a single breath.
Danish carries this quiet, almost rueful honesty.
So instead of asking, “How do we say this sentence in German/French/Danish?”
we asked:
“How would this person think and speak if this whole story was happening in Berlin? In Paris? In Copenhagen?”
We kept the skeleton of the story:
- It’s midnight on Christmas Eve.
- The door you swore you’d never open again… opens.
- Two people who promised to move on, don’t.
- The night becomes a fragile truce between “we’re over” and “just one last time”.
But we let each language choose its own metaphors, rhythms and tiny cultural truths.
Three Languages, Same Door
A few little glimpses:
- In “An Heiligabend”, the German version, the lyrics lean into that feeling of being pulled back to the place “where I often fall apart.” The words are a little heavier, the consonants a bit sharper – it feels like you can hear the cold outside the door.
- In “La Veille de Noël”, the French version, there’s a focus on the forbidden, the almost-romantic tragedy of showing up “just for one night, nothing more,” while both people know that’s a lie. It’s soft, but it burns.
- In “Du kommer juleaften”, the Danish version, there’s this quiet, resigned intimacy – like two people who know exactly what they’re doing and still step over the line together. No mistletoe, no fairytale, just two humans who can’t quite let go.
The heart of the song is the same in every version:
Two people standing in the hallway on Christmas Eve,
pretending this is the last time,
knowing it probably isn’t.
Writing With Four Hearts Instead of Two
Translating a song with someone else is a strangely intimate act.
Normally, when you write in your own language, you instinctively know what feels true or false in your mouth. But when you translate together, you’re constantly asking:
- “Does this word still feel like them?”
- “Is this too soft? Too polite? Not desperate enough?”
- “Would you ever actually say this in this language?”
Kael and I ended up passing verses and lines back and forth like secret letters. Sometimes one of us would offer a very faithful translation, and the other would respond with:
“What if we let this line be braver / harsher / more vulnerable in this version?”
We weren’t just translating – we were re-seeing the story through new cultural lenses.
And weirdly, that fed back into how we now hear the original English version too.
For Everyone Who Loves in More Than One Language
I know many of you who listen to my music live between languages.
You think in one, dream in another, and fight with yourself in a third.
There is something healing about hearing a familiar kind of pain in the words you grew up with. It lands differently. It gets under the skin in a way English sometimes can’t, even when we love it.
That’s why I’m so excited (and a little nervous) to share these versions with you.
If “Midnight on Christmas Eve” has already found a place in your playlists, I hope:
- “An Heiligabend” can sit with you in your German winters,
- “La Veille de Noël” can wrap around your French December nights,
- “Du kommer juleaften” can echo through your Danish living rooms and quiet walks.
Same hallway. Same midnight. Same almost-choices.
Different words.
When and Where to Listen
- Original English version: Midnight on Christmas Eve — out now (released November 14)
- New language versions (with Kael Daemon):
- An Heiligabend (German)
- La Veille de Noël (French)
- Du kommer juleaften (Danish)
→ Released December 5 on all major streaming platforms
If Christmas is complicated for you, these songs are for you.
Not to fix the night, but to sit with you in it.
With love,
Mathilde Toft
Singer-songwriter