Although it had long faded from public memory, this century has brought renewed awareness of the “Christmas Truce” of 1914. About ten years ago our family enjoyed the deeply moving, 2005 production of Joyeux Noel. We knew a little about the truce, but hardly enough. We later learned that there were truces in all fronts of that war.
To better understand this event requires an appreciation of the religious awareness of men and women at the turn of the twentieth century. Although the nihilism of Nietzsche, combined with the deleterious effects of the German, and, later, English “lower criticism”, had begun their march across elite academia and her handmaidens, their effect had not yet dribbled down to Everyman. Yet it was Everyman who would be sent out to march to his death in the name of the cynicism making its inroads into western civilization.
Most men and women of the West considered themselves Christian and cherished their traditions, with Christmas occupying a special place in their hearts. So when, a few days before Christmas, 1914, in defiance of national leaders, a “Christmas Truce” was observed across all fronts of the war, the politicians and military brass (along with certain civilian sectors ) were outraged. In other words, those not actually in the arena, in the war’s front; those not bleeding and dying, were angry. Adolph Hitler was not in the trenches at the time, but he is known to have been bitterly opposed to the truce. Charles De Gaulle called it “lamentable.”
In one section, the Truce began with Germans singing Silent Night, in their language. The British across no man’s land were surprised, but also began to sing the same Christmas carol in English. Eventually, a German soldier came out of his trench and erected a Christmas tree in no man’s land. British guns were aimed on him, but no one fired. That action spurred more spontaneous reactions, and, eventually, British and German soldiers were meeting in no man’s land, shaking hands, laughing, singing, exchanging cigarettes, food, and other small gifts — even soccer matches were held — in the spirit of Christmas.
Many letters are extant which tell, sometimes in moving prose, the details of the truce as it unfolded and ended in the letter-writers’ sections. Especially touching are the narrations about how the respite also allowed each opposing side to bury their dead.
In some sections, this truce extended through the first of January.
The brass descended with guns blazing. In one incident, an irate British officer, beside himself, took a rifle and, not to put too fine a point on it, murdered an unarmed German soldier standing in no man’s land.
The war resumed and carried on through three more Christmastimes and almost a fourth, were it not for the armistice of November 11, 1918. The high commands ensured there would be no more Christmas truces by, among other measures, issuing orders the following December warning against any “fraternizing” with the enemy. Anyone participating in any Christmas truce would be charged with “rendering aid and comfort to the enemy.”
By the end of the war, over twenty million people had died in the conflict, ten million of which were soldiers such as as those who had participated in the Christmas truce of 1914.
The 20th (twentieth) century should be known as the atheistic century, as it was characterized by regimes that boasted their denials of God. Gil Elliott in his 1972 work, The Book of the Dead tells us that the twentieth century, the century which represents the great triumph of humanism, gave us wars, revolutions, and concentration and re-education camps that killed between 89 and 159 million men, women, and children. Twenty-eight years later, seven French scholars wrote the magisterial, The Black Book of Communism which in over 900 chillingly documented pages, using formerly unavailable source documents, demonstrates that over 100 million fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, boys, girls, and babies died under the hand of atheistic communism, in addition to the dead from the wars of that century.
“From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members (James 4:1)?” The great fighter pilot and writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, whose existentialist tendencies I reject, but whose insights of man-in-action I respect, expressed it pithily: “For in the end, man always gravitates in the direction commanded by the lodestone within him.”
The Biblical, Augustinian concept of Just War needs to be dusted off and examined once again. There is evil in the world and Just Wars may be necessary; however, many wars certainly are not just.
On that first Christmas Day over two-thousand years ago was born the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). God commands all, including governors and princes and judges to honor Him. In history, many have done just that. And many have disdained to do so, especially in the 20th century. Peace and life tend to characterize the former; wars and death, the latter.
On this Christmas season of 2019, may we renew our love for God and may that renewal bring us to love our neighbor, and to be at peace with one another even as those soldiers of opposing armies were at peace, albeit for a short time, on the Christmas Truce of 1914.
Our family wishes you and yours a Very Merry Christmas season.
