English 
Chinese 
Dutch 
Arabic 
Spanish 
Portuguese 
Russian 
French 
Italian 
German 
Japanese 
Continue reading with a subscription
Get unlimited access to all our premium content and exclusive features.
Enjoy unlimited access, cancel anytime.
Summary
- At Christmas 1914, on parts of the Western Front, British and German soldiers stopped fighting for a day or two, and no general or government had ordered it.
- Pope Benedict XV had begged the nations in November to lay down their arms, and his attempt at a truce for Christmas failed because the governments could not all agree.
- On Christmas Eve the Germans put lamps and small fir trees along their trenches and sang carols, and when they called across for a song, the English sang them While Shepherds Watched.
- On Christmas Day men walked out to meet in no man’s land, traded cigars and buttons, chased a hare together, buried their dead and in a few places played football.
- At one burial between the lines a Scottish chaplain read the 23rd Psalm in English, and a German divinity student read it after him in German.
- In other places there was no quiet at all, for on the Yser the Germans attacked, sniping went on in some sectors, and there were casualties on Christmas Day.
- Most of the meetings ended on Boxing Day, in some places the ceasefire lasted past New Year, and at Christmas 1915 a London cable reported that the British were not permitting a truce.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture is quoted from the King James Version: Luke 2:8–14 and Psalm 23:1–4.
- Sir Edward Hulse, Letters Written from the English Front in France between September 1914 and March 1915 (privately printed, 1916): letters of 28 December 1914 and 5 January 1915.
- Bruce Bairnsfather, Bullets & Billets (1916), chapters on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1914.
- Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, encyclical appealing for peace, 1 November 1914.
- War diary of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, 24–25 December 1914 (The National Archives, London), as transcribed in “The Soldiers’ Truce, Christmas Eve 1914”, Paper Trail, 2019.
- Diary of George Beck, Royal Warwickshire Regiment (Dorset History Centre, D/1820), in “Christmas Truce recorded in WW1 diary”, Dorset History Centre, 2016.
- National Army Museum, “The Christmas Truce” (2014), with the diary of Rifleman William Eve.
- Imperial War Museums, “Christmas Truce”.
- The Gazette, “World War 1: the Christmas truce of December 1914”.
- “At the Front”, an officer’s account from the Daily Mail, Grey River Argus, 20 February 1915.
- “Christmas at the Front”, soldiers’ letters gathered by a London correspondent, Evening Post, 18 February 1915.
- “Christmas in the Trenches”, cable from London of 1 January 1915, Ashburton Guardian, 2 January 1915.
- “No Christmas Truce”, cables of 12 December 1914, Ashburton Guardian, 15 December 1914; “The Pontifical Initiative”, Marlborough Express, 16 December 1914.
- “No Christmas Truce”, cable of 26 December 1915, Northern Advocate, 28 December 1915.
- “Strange Christmas Service”, Nelson Evening Mail, 29 March 1916.
Leave a Reply