The Christmas truce
I’m reading the most peculiar book, called Silent Night: The Story of the Christmas Truce, by Stanley Weintraub. To be more accurate, I suppose, it is the story behind the book is so odd. In it, the author recounts the history of the 1914 “Christmas Truce”.
The events described took place in the midst of World War II, the so-called “war to end all wars”. For a time, weapons were laid down on both sides of the battlefield, and enemies walked across the front lines, sharing holiday greetings and contents of their Christmas packages from home.
There had been strange “outbreaks of peace” even before the Christmas Truce. Quoting from the book, “A week before Christmas near Armentieres, a Daily Express correspondent wrote later, the Germans slipped a ‘splendid’ chocolate cake into the British lines with a message explaining, ‘We propose having a concert tonight as it is our Captain’s birthday, and we cordially invite you to attend – provided you will give us your word of honour as guests that you agree to cease all hostilities between 7:30 and 8:30. When you see us light the candles and footlight at the edge of our trench at 7:30 sharp you can safely put your heads above your trenches, and we shall do the same, and begin the concert.”
Later, a German soldier shouts over to the Allies and “announces that a gift from his side is coming. The British dive for cover, shouting for a sandbag to cover it, but the container, a boot, explodes only with sausage and chocolates… On Christmas Eve the Royal Flying Corps dropped a padded, brandy-steeped plum pudding on the German airfield at Lille. The next day the Germans responded with a careful airdrop of a bottle of rum”.
I’ve been wondering why, if it was possible to have cordial intervals such as these during a time of war, we see so much venomous infighting among people of faith.
I’m not suggesting that we should relax our standards or disregard those things we have come to believe in and to treasure about our churches or compromise on key elements of our faiths. But I see no value in refusing to acknowledge our common ground. And I see no advantage to be gained by sneering at other people who love Christ, yet who express their love for Him in a manner different from our own.
During the Christmas truce of 1914, for at least a little while, enemy soldiers laid down their weapons and united around the Son of God, the One who had come to save all mankind. As Christians, we all profess a belief in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. I believe it is possible to treat those who choose a different path to Him with respect, even when we disagree with the particular path they have chosen. I believe it is possible to state our beliefs clearly and unwaveringly without being rude in the process. As St. Vincent de Paul said, “I have never succeeded when I have spoken with the faintest suspicion of hardness. One must be ever on one’s guard not to embitter the heart, if one wishes to move the mind.”
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
- Ephesians 4:1-16
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