The day the guns of war were hushed
As the world seeks a path forward from COVID-19, we might all do well to consider the ephemeral realization of peace that took place on Christmas Day 106 years ago.
They called it “The War to End All Wars,” something the unfurling of history would quickly mock. Still, for a few hours near the end of 1914, on the freezing landscape of Western Europe, the spirit of Christmas was able to halt World War I, at least for a while.
The story of the Christmas Truce has become legend in its retelling, making it hard to sift fact from fiction. But it did happen.
On Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day, British and German soldiers forgot about the uniforms their adversaries were wearing and saw the people beneath.
The battle lines in Ypres, Belgium, were close, at some points only 30 yards apart, and soldiers shivering in the mud that winter would often call out to each other.
Then, German soldiers on Christmas Eve erected small, candle-lit Christmas trees, and what happened next, at different points along miles of fortifications, met the definition of miracle.
Shouts became songs. At one spot, Brits singing “O Come All Ye Faithful,” or “Silent Night,” depending on the telling, were joined by Germans across the divide who sang in the original tongue. The first courageous souls stood, and gradually, men from each side climbed out of their trenches and walked across No Man’s Land to greet each other.
“Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!” Lt. Sir Edward Hulse, who fought for Britain, is quoted as saying in the book “Christmas Truce,” by Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton.
There are accounts of Brits and Germans sharing food, cognac and cigarettes; helping each other bury their dead and praying together over graves, even playing soccer.
“I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,” Alfred Anderson, the last living witness to the truce, who died on Nov. 21, 2005, told the London Observer the previous year.
“All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machine gun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted, ‘Merry Christmas,’ even though nobody felt merry.”
The new friendships did not last long; this same land would be host to some of the most horrific scenes of the war.
“The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war,” Anderson told the British paper.
This Christmas, as with so many before it, young men and women overseas defend our nation. We pray today, and every day, for their safe return. And for an end to the suffering of so many around the globe trapped in the horror of war.
Suffering persists within our nation as well, as more and more of our battles seem to be civil wars.
The pandemic offers a common enemy to every person, regardless of allegiance. But it remains an invisible enemy that the most extreme among us stubbornly dismiss.
Regardless of the coronavirus, fissures continue to deepen throughout society. Our elected leaders, forever confuse the concept of retreat from a position with a surrender of principles
As we expect better from others, we must summon greater depths of empathy and compassion from ourselves.
Christmas lasts 24 hours. But the spirit of the miraculous truce that was marked 106 years ago can be realized every day.