It’s a tantalizing dream, this idea that peace might someday break out all over the globe. More than any other time of the year, it seems, we long and pray for peace on earth at Christmastime. Thus, stories of a Christmas Truce over a century ago tease our dreams.
War breaks out so easily everywhere we turn. But when does peace just break out, like some flashmob scene on YouTube? Well, it did on Christmas Eve 110 year ago, if only for a few hours. Not everywhere, but in numerous places along the bloody battlelines of World War I. And spontaneously.
The Great War, as they called it, had begun months before. Hope of a brief conflict gave way to hopelessly deadlocked trench warfare wherein millions died – as much from disease and despair as from destructive ammunition and poison gasses.
But it was in those very trenches that a Christmas fever of sorts broke out. The stories surfaced slowly, sporadically, as foot soldiers sent letters and pictures back home. Pictures of enemy fighters standing side by side, weapons at rest, faces written in acceptance, not hate.
Troops singing carols on one side echoed troops on the other. A few of the bravest stuck their heads above the trenches, calling out greetings across the barbed wire and muddied fields to the trenches on the other side, sometimes a mere 30 yards away. Cautiously, would-be combatants climbed over the barriers, and met in the decimated no man’s land, exchanging cigarettes and drink, a biscuit or two, a souvenir perhaps. Soldiers even reported informal games of football.
It was all very bizarre, surreal, as gunfire was heard down the line. Severely doubted by those who weren’t there to witness it, the tales of the truce grew entangled in mythical fabrications. Until eyewitnesses and researchers set the story straight, at least as straight as we’ll ever know.
Localized truces did occur at other times during the war – opportunities to retrieve dead comrades for proper burial, for example. But this was different. This was about celebrating a common holiday, sharing traditions between otherwise mortal enemies.
Commanding officers generally took a dim view of Christmas truces. Often, guys in the trenches shared the same sentiment. After all, those other guys have just killed some of ours, they’d say. These exchanges messed with the duty of foot soldiers to view their equals in the opposing trenches as enemies to be shot at and killed. For victory to be achieved, the primacy of patriotism had to win the day over religious or holiday sentiment.
In subsequent Christmases, far fewer holiday truces were reported. The war was growing too intense for friendly exchanges. Who can sing out to one’s enemies the words of “Silent Night” through gas masks, of all things? Who dares do so with deadly poisons filling the air?
The war ended when those at the top – generals and heads of state – grew weary of the war and realized collective annihilation could only be averted by an armistice (a formal ceasefire), this time without carol singing. The troops on the front lines, those that remained alive and whole, had long before given up on a happy ending.
As the more global and deadly 2nd World War would prove, there were ultimately no winners in the 1st. And the conclusion of the second global conflict would lead to the Cold War, a protracted battle that imprisoned even more millions in death, depravity, and despair. One war’s beginning proved the previous war’s encore.
More than a century on, the battle lines have re-formed roughly along the 35th longitudinal line to the east this Christmas season, the names of Belgium, France, England, and Germany replaced by Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, and Sudan. Elsewhere, nations, even stable, democratic governments like South Korea and France, totter on the brink of chaos.
Meanwhile, the borders of my own country grow tense from migrant surges and tariff threats. On political edge so long, we are weary and exhausted. We brace for protracted national conflict in lieu of peace and unity. Some even cry death to domestic opponents! Can we ever trust the other side? Can we ever really govern together?
If the past century has taught us anything, it is that war is not very helpful at ending war, even less so at building a better world. It may be the handiest means of ridding our world of intractable bullies or staving off annihilation, but it does not necessarily bring peace.
Yet history has also taught us that war is hard to avoid. Our world is ever trapped in intergenerational enmity, of ideologies clashing with other beliefs, of nations coveting others’ lands, of bullies who won’t go away. You can’t avoid war, not very easily. Even Christmas, it seems, cannot interrupt war – at least not for long.
Writing in the depths of the U.S. Civil War, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned,
“And in despair I bowed my head:
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said,
‘For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.’”
Yet, hope for our desperate humanity really does spring eternal. Greeting cards and freshly minted carols continue to proclaim peace on earth. Here it is Christmas once more, that high, holy season in our churches and secularizing society. We find ourselves longing, hoping against reason that maybe finally this Christmas, our prayers for peace will be answered.
And well we should – hope, that is. For peace is what the angel promised. A promise for “all people” the angel said, a vast choir echoing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14 NIV)
If we read that passage too quickly, we miss an important point. The heart of the message of the Christmas story, of the angels bringing “good news of great joy,” is that that very day in Bethlehem, hometown of the nation’s hero, David, a Savior was born, a savior who is none other than Christ the Lord.
A savior! A Savior who has come to bring peace.
Our longing for peace has merit. Jesus himself said, “Blessed are the Peacemakers for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) Peacemaking is a noble profession, one that all believers are called to take up.
And what is peacemaking? At a basic level, it is reconciling people with God and with one another. Dig a little deeper and we discover that peacemaking is fulfilling the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And what is His will? Namely that peace, righteousness and justice will reign, for those are all attributes of God’s character. Wherever God is, we find peace, righteousness and justice.
We’re not talking merely the end of conflict, but the restoration of wellbeing, of repairing things to be as they are intended to be. When God created the earth, he made it good, very good. The word “wholesome” comes to mind, as in whole, complete. It was all as God had designed.
Thus, God deems it to be once more. Thus, the need for a Savior who will bring it to pass.
I’m not sure who said it first – maybe it doesn’t matter, not worth fighting over anyway – but as an old saying goes, “Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of God.” Jesus, our Immanuel (“God with us”) is the presence of God. Jesus, as Isaiah the prophet of old foretells, is the Prince of Peace.
Oddly, there was no peace with the birth of Jesus, nor ever in his lifetime or since, if we are talking about the absence of human conflict. But if we define peace as the presence of the Prince of Peace, we discover that wherever God’s presence is found, there is peace.
Bear in mind, we are not talking about some passive presence, this presence of God, but a presence that is tirelessly and unceasingly proactive on our behalf, on behalf of all His creation. With the coming of the Savior, God demonstrates that He will not rest until His peace and presence reign, as the carol “Joy to the World” proclaims, “far as the curse is found.”
That’s the promise of wellbeing. With Jesus, it breaks forth as sure as flowers blossom in spring.
I think about that Christmas back in 1914. The earth itself had been ripped apart. Trenches were being clawed through the fields of Europe like the tracks of a giant creature gone mad. Trees and all forms of vegetation were obliterated in the face of hate. Bodies of men and horses lay strewn randomly and everywhere.
Yet there in the midst of that moral gloom, young men, boys really, defied the darkness with innocent attempts at peacemaking. We think peacemaking requires the experience and skill of seasoned diplomats. The scenes of that Christmas remind us that even the most naïve and lowly can rise to heal the wounds of nations.
Was their attempt at peacemaking successful? Well, no, if you are asking, Did it end the war? But a definitive yes, if you are asking, Did it bring wellbeing in the midst of a chaotic moment? For a brief few hours, men lay down their arms, reached across barbed wire, and embraced as fellow human beings. Whatever impact it had or didn’t have on the wider world, it left an indelible mark of God’s goodness on those who witnessed it.
So, in answer to the cynics out there this Christmas season, I say it is always worth the time and effort to make peace, bring wellness, build wholesomeness. The carol, “Joy to the World,” speaks less of the birth of the Christ-child than it does of the time when Christ is visibly king of all creation. When, as the writer Isaac Watts declares, “He rules the world with truth and grace.”
But the carol reminds us that embedded in that manger is the Prince of Peace, the One who has come to bring peace on earth as it is in heaven.
I don’t fully know how those Christmas truces of World War I affected the lives of those who participated. Recorded reflections are scarce. But for some, it certainly had a profound impact. As one participant recalled, it was the “most extraordinary celebration of [Christmas] that any of us will ever experience.” And from another, it was “one of the most extraordinary sights that anyone has ever seen.”
We’ve established that it was extraordinary. And so, it always seems with peacemaking – out of the ordinary, outside of the norm. We are never promised, short of final consummation of our salvation, lasting peace. But we are ever called to make peace. We are called to live extraordinary lives.
For that is what the Savior came to do. He came to infuse us with the music of redemption and wholeness, to paraphrase Watts, so that we could employ our songs even as the rocks and hills cry out, filling the earth with melodies of peace.
Never mind whether others try to shut down our music. Never mind how our song is received. We are to sing, as the angels sang, of the “glories of His righteousness” and the “wonders of His love.” And let the music of peace do its work.
The 2005 movie, “Joyeux Noël” (I’ll rate it cautionary for one brief scene with sexual content), is a fictionalized account the Christmas truce, based on an actual event. The lead singer of the Berlin Imperial Opera company was sent on a solo visit to the front line in December 1914. His singing led Scottish soldiers to stand up and applaud. For a more in depth take on World War I’s Christmas truces, see Understanding the 1914 Christmas Truce.
For my other reflections this holy season, see Holiday – On a journey in the borderlands. To keep receiving my regular postings, write me at Contact Us!
Public domain photo: Weihnachtsfriede (Christmas Truce 1914)
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