Christmas on the Western Front

On this Christmas Eve, I'm reminded of a story from World War I, when on December 24, 1914 - during the first year of the conflict - Allied and German soldiers along the western front spontaneously declared a temporary cessation of hostilities on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Here is the story as told by Stanley Weintraub, author of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce:

...the Germans set trees on trench parapets and lit the candles. Then, they began singing carols, and though their language was unfamiliar to their enemies, the tunes were not. After a few trees were shot at, the British became more curious than belligerent and crawled forward to watch and listen. And after a while, they began to sing.

By Christmas morning, the "no man's land" between the trenches was filled with fraternizing soldiers, sharing rations and gifts, singing and (more solemnly) burying their dead between the lines. Soon they were even playing soccer, mostly with improvised balls.

According to the official war diary of the 133rd Saxon Regiment, "Tommy and Fritz" kicked about a real football supplied by a Scot. "This developed into a regulation football match with caps casually laid out as goals. The frozen ground was no great matter ... The game ended 3-2 for Fritz."

The moment was simply miraculous, and not repeated again as the war dragged on for nearly four more years with millions of additional casualties.

Back in 1996, country music singer Collin Raye released an album titled The Gift, which contained a song about the 1914 Christmas truce called "It Could Happen Again". Here is that tune, featuring an introduction by the late Johnny Cash:



There is much about human nature that is dark and evil, but events such as the aforementioned demonstrate that even so, there is a basic goodness amongst humanity which celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ can and has evoked. Could it happen again? I believe so.

Merry Christmas.

Update:

As posted by Tom Kratman in the comments, here is another song about the event: "Christmas in the Trenches" by John McCutcheon (1989)