Wednesday, December 24, 2014

The Amazing Christmas Truce of 1914

As has been noted from time to time this year, the Great War, later to be called World War I, began one hundred years ago this past summer. By August 1914, Britain and France were fully engaged in war against Germany.
In September trench warfare began as troops from both sides constructed opposing fortifications and dugouts protected by barbed wire, machine-gun nests, snipers, and mortars, with an in-between area called No Man’s Land. The 450-mile “Western front” stretched from the English Channel coast southward through Belgium and Eastern France to Switzerland.
Living in and fighting from the trenches was a terrible experience, one of considerable squalor with so many men living in a very constrained space. Here is how one website describes trench life:
Scraps of discarded food, empty tins and other waste, the nearby presence of the latrine, the general dirt of living half underground and being unable to wash or change for days or weeks at a time created conditions of severe health risk (and that is not counting the military risks). Vermin including rats and lice were very numerous; disease was spread both by them, and by the maggots and flies that thrived on the nearby remains of decomposing human and animal corpses.
But at Christmastime in many places along the Western front, there was an unofficial truce as some of the men on both sides decided to celebrate the joy of Christmas rather than fight.
The Wall Street Journal began its Dec. 19 article “The Spirit of the 1914 Christmas Truce” with these words written by Frank Richards, a British soldier:
On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with ‘A Merry Christmas’ on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. . . . Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.
From The Illustrated London News of January 9, 1915: "British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches"
The amazing story of the events of Dec. 25, 1914, is engagingly told by Stanley Weintraub in his 2001 book, “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.” Weintraub ended his book with the closing words of “A Carol from Flanders” by Frederick Niven, whom Weintraub calls a “very minor Scottish poet of Great War vintage.”
Niven wrote, “O ye who read this truthful rime / From Flanders, kneel and say: / God speed the time when every day / Shall be as Christmas Day.”
Even if they were not as spectacular as sometimes dramatized, still those events 100 years ago are worth considering—and they are being widely remembered this week at various commemorative activities being held around the world. That amazing Christmas truce of 1914 was a ray of hope at a very dark time in the history of the world.
That ray of hope still shines, and is still much needed now, 100 years later. There is so much that is dark is the world today: racial tension across the U.S., fierce fighting in Iraq and across the Middle East, hunger and poverty stunting lives in city slums around the world, and so forth.
But Christmas is the time of the year for renewed hope for the future and renewed determination to work to make every day to be like Christmas Day. I pray that the good news of Christ, the Prince of Peace, will lodge in all our hearts.

11 comments:

  1. "Ray of hope" is a good phrase for such an event, Leroy. Things like this have always inspired me to suspect that somewhere under our idolatries and idolatry-inspired brutalities there is a sense of humanity and fellow feeling that cannot be entirely crushed, that might someday blossom into a world-wide garden of human solidarity. Of course, we know there are other possible interpretations; among which is that such events are evidence of very little fellow feeling among human beings, that in the end their idolatries and idolatry-inspired brutalities cease only when exhausted, but then only temporarily till they've forgotten their last major indulgence in misguided hostility.

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    1. Indeed, may this Christmas renew our hope again.

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  2. Once again, Leroy, "spot on!" as the British would say. Garrison Keillor spotlights the Truce in today's "Writer's Almanac" (http://writersalmanac.org/). What he does not say, however, is that a good deal of controversy exists around exactly what went on back then. See the interesting articles on CNN and in the New York Times (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/23/sport/football/christmas-truce-football-match/index.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/sports/soccer/tale-of-1914-christmas-day-truce-soccer-game.html). What all of this says to me is this: We all need our stories--whether with football matches, fat elves, or heavenly host--in order to "keep hope alive."

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    1. Thanks for your comments, Michael. And while I think it is very important to "keep hope alive," I also would like hope to be based in reality rather than in fiction.

      There was also an article in the 12/20 issue of The Economist which my son Ken showed me last Saturday and then my son Keith commented on today: "They articulated it in a way that made sense to me – that it was very early in the war and each side was still expecting total victory soon, so it was more out of good form and confidence than pathos and expectation that they were all cannon fodder. There was no repeat later when the reality sunk in."

      The link is http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21636766-pre-christmas-lull-political-combat-probably-means-less-meets-eye-still

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  3. A meaningful comment by local Thinking Friend Eric Dollard:

    "Maybe someday there will be no more stupid wars and then, after that, no more wars at all with Christmas becoming an all-year event. The touching story of the Christmas truce in 1914 inspires hope."

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  4. Thanks for your response, Leroy, which included the link to the Economist article as well as Keith's comments.

    In response to my comments, you say that you "would like hope to be based in reality rather than in fiction." Going back to the three "hope-filled" stories I mentioned, one might ask, Did the German and British soldiers "really" play football on Christmas 1914? Does Santa Claus "really" bring Christmas gifts? Did the heavenly host "really" appear to the shepherds at Jesus' birth (Luke 2:13-14)? Two of these three stories deal with historical events that may or may not have actually happened. Santa Claus is clearly fictional (Sorry to break it to you this way), though his story engenders "hope" among children and many adults, especially ones who have large economic interests. (See the famous editorial, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus," http://www.newseum.org/exhibits/online/yes-virginia/.)

    I suppose that I want to "problematize," or "complexify" (Aren't those great words?), the relationship between "reality" and fiction, especially as they are connected with hope.

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  5. Amen. A story from which ballads and legends should form and endure, even as St. Nicholas, whose day we recently remembered. May we learn and follow in the good of those who have gone before.

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  6. You scooped The Star, Leroy!
    http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article4925172.html#/tabPane=tabs-a7245120-1

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  7. Here's John McCutcheon's rendition of the events in his song "Christmas in the Trenches": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJi41RWaTCs

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    1. Thanks for sending this link, Michael. I just now listened to it for the first time. In the interview mentioned below Dr. Weintraub made reference to McCutcheon and his song.

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  8. As I write this I am listening to an interview with Stanley Weintraub, the author of the book mentioned above, which was broadcast by NPR in Dec.2004. (I heard just a part of this broadcast on Christmas morning.) The link is http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4246639

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