For the past several Christmas seasons I have enjoyed reading a book or two about the origins of Christmas. The history of Christmas is fascinating, and often surprising! This year I picked up a different type of Christmas history, “Silent Night,” the story of the WWI Christmas truce by Stanley Weintraub.
WWI, known as The Great War, began June, 1914, and officially ended November, 1918. Although the U.S. did not enter the war until the final year, 65 million men from 30 countries fought, and nearly 10 million died. One soldier wrote, “This is not a war. This is the ending of the world.”
Weintraub describes conditions in the trenches as: icy cold with thick, viscous mud, sometimes “up to a man’s middle.” Many enemy trenches were separated only by a narrow strip of No Man’s Land, often only one hundred yards, or “fifty paces away” from one another. They could hear each other talking, smell the other’s food cooking, and when the firing began, the shells flew down “like snowflakes.”
December, 1914, the first Christmas of war arrived. What happened is legend-worthy, but multiple primary sources from all sides verify its truth. Nearly all along the 440-mile Western Front, some measure of a Christmas truce began to swell. Blended accounts relate that on the German side, the shelling subsided and small, lit fir trees appeared along the parapets.
Shouts cried out, “You no shoot, we no shoot!” Makeshift signs on which were written, MERRY CHRISTMAS were raised. After a confused lull, the Germans started singing. Then a song exchange began. Some were carols, some were folk songs, some were bawdy bar tunes.
All were appreciated. The unexpected beauty of the peaceful lights and singing elicited tears from many of the soldiers, and spontaneous applause from both sides. However, one soloist that night was from the Paris Opera, whose singing left both sides awed and silent.
One French soldier wrote home, “It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere; and…there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches and then there were those lights—I don’t know what they were. And then they sang Silent Night-Stille Nacht. I shall never forget it. It was one of the highlights of my life.”
The next day, Christmas day, the “outbreak of peace” continued. Men cautiously climbed over their parapets, walked towards one another, smiling, shaking hands, sharing languages or words they held in common, exchanged food and drink, chocolate and cigarettes, and the most coveted gifts of all, uniform belt buckles, caps, helmets, and buttons!
It was implicitly understood that this was a day to peacefully gather and bury their dead left on No Man’s Land. There were also football games (what we call soccer), played with improvised balls made from materials such as muddy straw rolled up in an old sack or shirt. No referees were needed and no scores were kept. One English soldier summarized the day by writing, “It was hard to think we were at war with one another.”
Despite the desires of the soldiers, it did not last. According to the rules of war, it could not last. In subsequent Christmas seasons, high commands on both sides demanded an increase in shelling and artillery in order to prevent a second truce.
After all, congeniality towards your enemy is not the best way to win a war. Weintraub concluded with this observation, “when the shooting stopped, it was only a parenthesis between the horrors that had come before and the horrors still to come.”
It was only a parenthesis, but a parenthesis that has made a permanent mark in the histories of both war and Christmas. My own conclusion, I am sure, is similar to many: Only Christmas could have motivated this uprising in the lower ranks for an unauthorized cease-fire. Only Christmas could have initiated such spontaneous gestures of goodwill towards wartime enemies. Only Christmas could have inspired soldiers on each end of the rifle to realize they would rather be friends than enemies.
The Christmas truce of 1914 was a revolution of sorts, a Christmas revolution. If it served as a peaceful parenthesis in the midst of the horrors of war, it may also serve as a parenthesis in our own complex, sometimes troubling, and often-worrisome everyday lives. However you choose to share it—after all, the truce would never have been a truce had it not been shared—may it be a parenthesis of personal peace and goodwill… towards even those you might least imagine.
Pocatello resident Nancy Johnson was raised in Southern California and has lived in several states. She’s earned multiple degrees from Idaho State University, where she currently teaches principles of speech. She and her husband Eric have five children.