“Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11:00 in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a ‘dug-out’ (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere … Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the Ground between the trenches & exchanged souvenirs & shook hands. Yes, all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvelous, isn’t it?”
Henry Williamson
London Rifle Brigade
“Such a thing should not happen in wartime. Have you no German sense of honor.”
Adolf Hitler
As a former history professor, I love those stories where the God of Creation steps out of His role observing His creation and shows Himself bigger than anything the world has to offer.
One such episode took place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1914, on the Western Front—the most unlikely place for God’s Spirit to appear—in the midst of one of history’s most horrific and hopeless battlefield settings.
Please allow me a personal aside before I get to the main story. Several weeks ago, I took two of my grandsons, Joshua (a.k.a. the “Snapper”) and my namesake Jeemes Payne, to the nearby Air Force Museum. It is the nation’s premier exhibit of military aircraft with marvelous sections on World War I, World War II, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Of particular interest to “Baby” Jeemes—now ten years old and a head taller than anybody else in his class–was the Sopwith Camel in the World War I exhibit. I asked him if he had heard about Charles M. Schultz and his comic book “Peanuts” and Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy; especially those comic strip panels where Snoopy has his imaginary dogfights with the “Red Baron.” I told him the story.
Later, in the gift shop as we left was a Snoopy Sopwith Camel model.
As much as I love those comic strips with Snoopy as a fighter pilot, what I am about to describe is neither the product of a master cartoonist’s creative impulses nor a work of fiction.
It really happened and changed the lives of all those who participated in the event.
Perhaps a word of explanation.
In my view of history, two episodes stand out above all others. In the spiritual realm it is the birth, life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing can compare to those events we acknowledge during this special time of year. In the physical realm, the true watershed event for western civilization is World War I. The strands of history all lead up to World War I, but then the dominance of European civilization collapses with the four-year total war mutual suicide from 1914-1918. All subsequent events at the strategic level—the emergence of the American Empire, World War II, the bipolar Cold War, the rise of China, and the problems we are still struggling with in the Middle East—can be directly attributed to World War I and the peace treaties that followed.
That is why my newest book, a work of historical fiction, is set in the years just prior to World War I
At any rate, prior to World War I (and beginning with the Napoleonic Wars), warfare was a matter of mobility and technology. Quick, decisive wars were fought, with the losers bearing the brunt of the costs of war. Five months after the start of World War I, the optimism of a quick victory for all the major European powers had evaporated into the reality of a brutal stalemate. In the West, for example, the failure of the German Army to take Paris and subsequent unsuccessful Allied efforts to dislodge the Germans, resulted in a series of flanking operations with 600 miles of trenches extending from the border of Switzerland to the North Sea (the so-called “Race to the Sea”). The bottom line: soldiers were reduced to a mole-type physical and psychological existence; they lived in a maze of tunnels and ditches underground; mud, water and drainage were constant problems (especially when it grew colder); they learned to live with rats, vermin and diseases; they were surrounded with death and decaying bodies; all amid the ear-splitting noises of an almost nonstop artillery barrage from both sides.
In between the trenches was a piece of ground called “No Mans Land” with barbed wire and explosive devices, protected by machine gun nests and targeted artillery strikes.
This type of warfare chewed up men and horses alike. War turned into a brutal, hell-like experience.
Hope itself became a casualty of the trenches.
Then the unexplainable happened.
Some reports claim it began in the German trenches where they displayed candles and, in some cases, placed these candles on Christmas trees. Then these same soldiers started singing Christmas carols. The sound wafted like a fleeting hope over No Mans Land. The British (and to a lesser extent the French) responded by singing their own Christmas songs. Shouts of Merry Christmas rose above the parapets of both sides.
It was as though, in the most deplorable conditions imaginable, the spirit of Christmas—and all the season entails—somehow broke through the darkness consuming the respective trenches.
Then one brave soul left their trench unarmed.
The soldiers on the other side refused to shoot him.
Then there was another.
And another.
Before long, some 100,000 soldiers of both sides were involved.
Suddenly, unexpectedly—and much to the chagrin of their High Commands and national capitals—an unofficial Christmas Truce (in German Weihnachsfrieden) took over.
Indeed, something higher than national loyalties emerged.
Former adversaries met in No Man’s Land to shake hands, exchange gifts (food, cigarettes, alcohol) and souvenirs (buttons and hats). The artillery fell silent. There was a soccer match (won by the Germans), haircuts, burial ceremonies and shared church services. According to one participant, “not a shot was fired all night.”
In some places, the informal truce lasted until New Year’s Day.
But, alas, the informal Christmas truce would not last. The dark forces feeding on the blood of young men overwhelmed the fledgling spirit of peace. Until 13 million died. The very flower of European culture. Commandeers threatened the participants. Media censorship stifled news of the event lest the narrative of war be somehow undermined. There would be no repeat of the informal Christmas Truce for the remaining years of the war.
“Sigh.”
Jeemes, what do you think happened with the original Christmas Truce in 1914?
In my view, the spirit world burped into the natural realm without invitation or expectation.
Some of you may disagree.
So what?
This holiday season, we acknowledge a similar type of intervention over 2,000 years ago—a total surprise, in a place least expected, in a way that only the prophets could foresee—when God sent His own Son into the world.
There was no other way to redeem the heart of man.
That brings us to today.
This season.
My prayer for each of you is that the God of this universe finds a way to invade the personal safe-space of your existence.
And that you will not only be surprised but changed. Maybe it will be the unexpected word or compliment of a friend. Perhaps your heart will be pricked by a movie or the refrain of a long-forgotten Christmas carol. Or the realization of how beautiful your daughter’s face looks. Maybe a better-than-expected doctor’s report.
Just as all of the participants of the wonderful Christmas Truce over 100 years ago were surprised, and changed, by the sudden appearance of God’s spirit of Christmas, so—I pray—will you in like manner.
My God loves bold prayers like that.
Most of all, during this special season, please allow this realization to settle in; it is not what we can do, or the presents we can give, but what has been done for us that counts for eternity.
Imogene and I pray you have the most blessed Christmas ever this year …
