It was a short peace in a terrible war
There is either something whimsically hopeless in this, or else something very encouraging
There was no truce on Christmas Day, 1915. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but ultimately such sentiment found no purchase in the trenches along the Western Front. A year prior, for a brief moment, things were different – a surreal scene, according to those present. It was a brief, strange respite from one of the most horrific conflicts in recorded history.
“There is either something whimsically hopeless in this, or else something very encouraging,” The Washington Post wrote of the reports that trickled in from the front lines. “Mixed with the brutality of war is a spirit whose supremacy may one day bring war to an end.”
Few could explain it, and none present would live to see such a moment again. Soon enough, temporary hopefulness gave way to bloodshed.
A month after the war’s outbreak in Europe, the Catholic Church elected Pope Benedict XV, for a tenure that would become utterly consumed by what he’d deem, "the suicide of civilized Europe.” In early December 1914, he sent a letter to warring parties, pleading, “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.” His letter, one in a long line of bids to end the war, was ultimately ignored by the powers that be.
But the following weeks saw the beginnings of an uneasy truce along the Western Front. The proximity between the warring sides gave way to occasional communications between soldiers, helped along by the English picked up by German troops who had spent time in London. News and sports scores were exchanged and songs were – sometimes tauntingly – sung by the opposing side.
Music played a key role in the surprise emergence of the informal Christmas truce. British machine gunner Bruce Bairnsfathe describes hearing a racket from the trenches, only to realize the opposing side were singing carols in German. A voice soon shouted in a thick accent, “Come over here.” They ultimately opted to meet halfway.
“My company happened to be in the firing line on Christmas eve, and it was my turn…to go into a ruined house and remain there until 6:30 on Christmas morning,” recounted British soldier, J. Reading, in a letter to his wife. “During the early part of the morning the Germans started singing and shouting, all in good English. They shouted out: ‘Are you the Rifle Brigade; have you a spare bottle; if so we will come half way and you come the other half.’”
Alfred Anderson, an 18-year-old Scottish soldier described the quiet of Christmas morning,
I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence. Only the guards were on duty. We all went outside the farm buildings and just stood listening. And, of course, thinking of people back home. All I'd heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted 'Merry Christmas', even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war.
Souvenirs were exchanged in no man’s land. Soccer was played. A German barber gave a haircut to a customer he’d served while living in England before the war. Musicians played music, including a violinist who performed a rendition of Handel’s "Largo from Xerxes” for a largely French audience. Some used the opportunity to collect and bury bodies of their fellow soldiers.
Not all was well in no man’s land. The silent Christmas day was shattered when German snipers shot a pair of British soldiers in Rue De Bois, France. In those places where the truce held for three days, the action was criticized by some.
“Such a thing should not happen in wartime,” wrote one particularly angry 25-year-old Austria-born soldier named Adolf Hitler. “Have you no German sense of honor left?”
Officers, too, were unhappy with the temporary turn of events. "[T]his is only illustrative of the apathetic state we are gradually sinking into,” wrote one British general. Orders reportedly came from above banning any future fraternization with the enemy. An attempt to repeat the occasion the following year went nowhere. Nor were truces made the following two years.
A month prior to Christmas Day 1918, the first World War mercifully ended, when Germany signed an armistice in Northern France.
Sources:
Christmas 1914 brought the men out of the trenches and the slaughter to a stop https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/christmas-1914-brought-the-men-out-of-the-trenches-and-the-slaughter-to-a-stop/2014/12/24/1949b1ea-8626-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html
WWI's Christmas Truce: When Fighting Paused for the Holiday https://www.history.com/topics/christmas-truce-1914-world-war-i-soldier-accounts