The Christmas Truce of World War I; How Football Played a Small Role

If you are like me, you will probably have heard this phrase a lot in the news. "Christmas spirit, we need to have the Christmas spirit."

This got me thinking, just what is the Christmas spirit? I suppose there are a lot of potential answers to that question. To Scrooge the Christmas spirit was a ghost. To the liquor industry the Christmas spirit comes in a bottle. Some people feel that the Christmas spirit is somehow the truce that takes place in the family where nobody brings up the issues, the quarrels.

Everyone can offer his or her own interpretation to the theme, as I don't want to pretend to know what it means exactly. It's the whole truce-interpretation I found particularly interesting though.

Because at that point I remembered a story my history teacher had told us about ten or so years ago. It involved war, Christmas, a truce, and football. An unlikely story, which makes for an interesting tale.

World War I gave the world its first brush with efficient widespread death. More than 8.5 million people would lose their lives to the war. Troops used trench warfare, machine-guns, poisonous gas, tanks, and airplanes for the first time.

Despite this unlikely theatre of carnage and destruction, the Christmas-spirit proved very much alive. Pope Benedict XV had earlier made a plea for a Christmas Truce, which was ignored by the Allied command. The ordinary troops however decided to adhere to this plea.

As the troops on both sides received luxury goods such as tobacco, chocolate, pudding, and other tokens, they were swept away by the seasonal spirit.

German troops held up signs: "You no fight, we no fight." British troops responded with signs proclaiming "Merry Christmas." This Christmas turned out to be a memorable one.

In some places fighting continued, but this was unusual. In some areas, officers established truces. In others, rank-and-file soldiers established trust.

Some soldiers defied direct orders from their commanding officers and met up with enemies who were, for the moment, no longer their foes. In other cases, officers encouraged the truces, or at least didn't intervene.

Soldiers from both sides left their trenches to meet up in No Man's Land. At first, the truce was used to reclaim and bury the dead but eventually, people started talking, joking and eventually someone brought a football along.

With the truce in full swing up and down the line there were a number of recorded games of football, although these were really just kick-abouts rather than a structured match.

In the one recorded match, a British major claimed in a letter home that the Brits had lost 3-2 to their German counter-parts in the same sector.

For a moment, even if it was a brief one, there was peace on earth as both enemies had put their differences a-side for a moment to celebrate Christmas.

Alas, the hope of a lasting peace faded away into the gray sky of Flanders as both sides' artillery opened up the next day to start a new day with a bang. This marked the end of the Christmas Truce and the end of hope for quick peace, as the war dragged on for four years.

In the end, the seasonal attention to joy, peace, and goodwill did not prevail back then. Let's make sure it does this year. Put your differences a-side, even if it's just a day, so everyone can celebrate Christmas in peace.