Folks,

I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Christmas carols are being played on my favorite classical music station this morning and as I sit here and listen to 'Silent Night' being sung in the original German, I am reminded of the great “Christmas Truce” of the Great War when foe and friend alike pulled themselves from out of the slimy depths of war and misery to join together in celebrating the Christmas season. What a wonderful thing that must have been to witness ... unless you were a politician or a general. I remember my grandfather was the first to tell me about it when I was a very small lad. He had read about it in the papers at the time it happened. I wonder who first had the idea of this truce? Is it known?

I understand that the Germans were the first to come out of their trenches singing Silent Night and the startled Brits held their fire and began to join in the singing. Some Fritz sitting there in the mud, stench and blood of his trench thinking of family, home and hearth and the beauty that had once been his on past Christmases must have had the idea to call a truce. He reasoned that this might be his last Christmas and that the enemy was Christian too and that they too were as miserable as were he and his comrades. Perhaps he confided in a friend and like a virus of good will the great idea began to spread?

Ultimately the celebration turned into a rousing and strongly contested football match that the Germans were winning when the truce was called to a halt by those insensitive chaps dining on clean table cloths and sipping rare wines far behind the lines. If this good will were to spread the war might be over in days!!! Not nearly enough men had died on either side and the generals had medals to win by others sacrifices, or so they may have reasoned. Therefore there was nothing to celebrate; not yet. How dare the common men with the wounds, rifles, bombs and shells declare a stop to all the killing? God was, after all, on THEIR side.

Perhaps if instead governments had been more concerned about who was on the side of God the war might never have happened in the first place?