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This Day In History 1914: The Christmas Truce Of World War I

By Louis Babcock
Published on: 10:14 PST, Dec 25, 2016

The Christmas truce during World War I was one of the very few positive things that happened during the Great War.

According to the History Channel, World War I began in June of 1914. The catalyst of the war lays squarely on the hands of Gavrila Princip, who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Princip was from Yugoslavia and he had just murdered the Archduke of Austria. The governments of Austria and Yugoslavia rapidly escalated from political posturing to military action. By the middle of August, the major countries of Europe were officially at war with each other.

The Great War, as it was originally known, was the first conflict of its type. Modern technology had made it easier to kill the enemy. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire battled Great Britain, Italy, France, and Russia on what became known as the Western Front. The casualties began to pile up on both sides as summer turned into fall and fall turned into winter. The sound of gunfire was constant until the sound of caroling broke through on Christmas Eve in 1914.

The idea for a Christmas truce was first introduced on December 7, 1914, by Pope Benedict XV. None of the warring nations would officially state that they would honor the wishes of Pope Benedict. Even though the governments of the nations that were at war would not officially call for a truce on Christmas, the soldiers who had been attempting to kill each other since August had taken it upon themselves to bring a little bit of light to one of the darkest times in human history.

The sound of Christmas carols began on Christmas Eve coming from the trenches occupied by the Germans and the British. Once daylight came on Christmas Day, soldiers began moving into the open area where they would have been easily killed. The area of land between the trenches of the countries at war was known as no-man’s land. To ensure that their opponents knew what was happening, the soldiers moving out of the trenches and into the open exclaimed “Merry Christmas.”

The British troops were unsure if this was a new tactic that German soldiers were using in order to lull them into a false sense of security and let their guard down. It was not until they realized that the Germans venturing out of the trenches were unarmed that the British soldiers realized that was a sincere gesture of humanity.

Living in the trenches, soldiers had very little in the way of gifts to exchange. It was not the actual gift, but the gesture of giving up something that the soldiers needed that made the gift exchange a truly special event. Soldiers exchanged materials and supplies that were rationed to them. These rations consisted of food and other consumable items that soldiers survived on while fighting in World War I. Historians also state that the opposing soldiers engaged in sport contests while engaging in the unofficial truce.

It was not all fun and games, though. Since bullets had finally stopped flying from trench to trench, soldiers were able to retrieve the corpses of their fallen comrades who had lost their lives in between the trenches.

Once Christmas was over, the war resumed. More countries took sides and were drawn into the war which made it a global war. The United States would eventually be drawn into the Great War in 1917. The war would eventually be over in 1918. With the countries of the world no longer trying to destroy each other, the massive death toll could finally be calculated. According to the History Channel, over 9 million soldiers lost their lives over the course of the four years that the war took place. A total of 21 million soldiers were wounded from the conflict.

The Christmas truce was the last time in human history that a major conflict or war had stopped in order to celebrate a holiday. Will humanity ever see a Christmas truce ever again?

[Featured Image By Rui Vieira/AP Photo]

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