In 2001, historian Stanley Weintraub published Silent Night, the true story of a spontaneous, if very informal and temporary, front lines truce in December 1914 between German and English troops during the first months of World War I. In Silent Night, Weintraub describes a time when soldiers on both sides of that war found the common truths of their lives and tried to grasp anew the meaning of Christmas.
Weintraub had recently retired as Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at Penn State, after heading Penn State’s Center for the Arts and Humanistic Studies. An internationally known expert on George Bernard Shaw, Weintraub wrote widely about the people and events of the twentieth century. Silent Night was the first of several books in which Christmas was the focal point of historical events. Others included: General Washington’s Christmas Farewell: A Mount Vernon Homecoming, 1783 (published in 2003); Eleven Days in December: Christmas at the Bulge, 1944 (published in 2006); General Sherman’s Christmas: Savannah, 1864 (published in 2009); and Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941 (published in 2011).
In Silent Night, we learn that the Christmas Eve truce of 1914 was not an isolated event, but a series local truces that extended into Christmas Day, bringing German and British troops out of the trenches in different spots along the front to share holiday treats, sing songs, and, in some cases, play soccer with each other. Before returning to what would become a world war.
The song Christmas 1915 by Irish musician Cormac MacConnell, tells a similar story. It resonates this year, when our sense of ourselves once more is under fire, but in a way far different from those sad holidays a century ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG3l-OBdcPI&list=RDMMJG3l-OBdcPI&start_radio=1
