Merry Christmas

Let’s visit one of the stories in our history books from Christmas past. It’s a story that proves anew that the essential message of Christmas – “Hail the newborn Prince of Peace” is as powerful today as it is poignant, as timely as it is timeless. It’s the tale of a truce … a brief, fleeting truce … that turned a World War I field of fire into a pageant of peace. As Time magazine reported it several years ago:
On a crisp, clear morning 100 years ago, thousands of British, Belgian and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of their trenches and spent Christmas mingling with their German enemies along the Western front.
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Most accounts suggest the truce began with carol singing from the trenches on Christmas Eve, “a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere”, as Pvt. Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment recalled, in a document later rounded up by the New York Times. Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade described it in even greater detail:
“First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.”
The next morning, in some places, German soldiers emerged from their trenches, calling out “Merry Christmas” in English. Allied soldiers came out warily to greet them. In others, Germans held up signs reading “You no shoot, we no shoot.” Over the course of the day, troops exchanged gifts of cigarettes, food, buttons and hats. The Christmas truce also allowed both sides to finally bury their dead comrades, whose bodies had lain for weeks on “no man’s land,” the ground between opposing trenches. The Christmas message of “Peace on earth,” caused the weary, battered Allied and German soldiers to lay aside their enmity and arms and “sing in exultation … joyful and triumphant.” Graham Williams wrote, the spirit of Christmas “is really a most extraordinary thing.” There is one particularly extraordinary Christmas message that should give us indomitable courage even in these troubling times. It’s from Isaiah 9:6, and it defines the hope that lies within us all: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given – and the government shall be upon his shoulders.” Even in the most dire of times, we rest secure in the words of one of my favorite Christmas carols, “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail.”

Merry Christmas (and Happy Chanukah!) to you and yours at this time of year.  Slow down and enjoy the conversations and time you spend with your family and friends.