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On Christmas Eve 1914, in the dank, muddy trenches on the Western Front of the first world war, a remarkable thing happened.It came to be called the Christmas Truce. And it remains one of the most storied and strangest moments of the Great War—or of any war in history.(snip)What happened next would, in the years to come, stun the world and make history. Enemy soldiers began to climb nervously out of their trenches, and to meet in the barbed-wire-filled “No Man’s Land” that separated the armies. Normally, the British and Germans communicated across No Man’s Land with streaking bullets, with...

Many people believe this to be a myth. But entering into the winter months in 1914, everyone thought that World War I would be over in time for the holiday season. The soldiers were weary of war and homesick. Families were split apart.Then, during the month of December, when the soldiers realized they would not be home with their families for Christmas, a miraculous event happened. Singing could be heard coming across the killing fields, known as No Man's Land, from both sides of the war.That evening of Christmas Eve brings a still calm over the battlefield. Despite heavy losses...

The original version...Austria.

The Christmas truce of 1914 is a story many of us have heard, but it’s well worth revisiting. It’s almost too good to be true.When the angels appeared to the shepherds outside Bethlehem on that night more than 2,000 years ago, they spoke of the great tidings of the incarnation and sang what has become the universal Christmas prayer of the centuries: “Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men.”Perhaps those same Christmas angels were singing over the Western Front in 1914, when the guns fell silent.The Christmas truce of 1914 is one of those stories many of us have heard,...

Our Troops Rock! Thank you for all you do! For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces. Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today! ~ Hall of Heroes ~ The Christmas Truce Info from here. You are standing up to your knees in the slime of a waterlogged trench. It is the evening of 24 December 1914 and you are on the dreaded Western Front. Stooped over, you wade across to the firing step and take over the watch. Having exchanged pleasantries, your bleary-eyed and...

2014 Christmas ad from Sainsbury’s – Christmas is for sharing. Made in partnership with The Royal British Legion, it commemorates the extraordinary events of Christmas Day, 1914, when the guns fell silent and two armies met in no-man’s land, sharing gifts – and even playing football together. The chocolate bar featured in the ad is on sale now at Sainsbury’s. All profits will go to The Royal British Legion and will benefit the armed forces and their families, past and present. Click for beautiful video.

VIDEO In the early months of the first world war Britain and German had a truce for Christmas eve. They drink and play football this is the first time the Britain and Germany had a truce.

  Our Troops Rock!  Thank you for all you do! For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.   Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ~ Hall of Heroes ~ The Christmas Truce Info from here.             You are standing up to your knees in the slime of a waterlogged trench.  It is the evening of 24 December 1914 and you are on the dreaded Western Front. Stooped over, you wade across to the firing step and take over...

On a frosty, starlit night, a miracle took place. In 1914, a melody drifted over the darkness of No Man’s Land. First “O, Holy Night,” then “God Save the King.” Peeking over their trenches for what must have been the first time in weeks, British soldiers were surprised to see Christmas trees lit with candles on the parapets of the enemy’s trenches. Then a shout: “You no shoot, we no shoot!” The Christmas Truce was a brief, spontaneous cease-fire that spread up and down the western front of World War I. It’s also a symbol of the peace on Earth...

Well, one of my favorites. It is the story from WW2 and the Battle of the Bulge where US and Germans got together.

Editor’s Note: This article was published in The Remnant in 2006 after having first appeared on the Your Guide to 20th Century History website. It is reproduced here with the permission of the author. The original song by John McCutcheon is well worth listening to as you read this incredible story from a day and age not so very far removed from our own but, alas, fading in every way from the consciousness of "grown up" and "enlightened" men who've lost sight of God, Country and even who and what they are anymore-- much less the true meaning of Christmas. MJM https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=s9coPzDx6tA___________________________Though World...

"We were just going to fire on them when we saw they had no rifles ... in about two minutes the ground between the two lines of trenches was swarming with men and officers of both sides, shaking hands and wishing each other a happy Christmas." British and German soldiers gathered in a dusty field in Afghanistan on Wednesday to play a game of soccer in memory of a Christmas truce spontaneously called between their armies a century ago during World War One. That moment in 1914 - when troops along Europe's Flanders front met after four months killing each...

With British and German forces separated only by a no-man's land littered with fallen comrades, sounds of a German Christmas carol suddenly drifted across the frigid air. "It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere: and at about 7 or 8 in the evening there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches and there were these lights -- I don't know what they were. And then they sang, "Silent Night" – "Stille Nacht." I shall never forget it, it was one of the highlights of my life. I thought, what a beautiful tune,"...

On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with ‘A Merry Christmas’ on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one…. Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench… So wrote a British soldier named Frank Richards, referring to the first Christmas of World War I, one hundred years ago this...

An incredible letter from trenches of the First World War by a soldier describing how he organised the famous 'Christmas Day Truce' has been unearthed and is expected to fetch £20,000 at auction. The eight-page pencilled note was sent by Lance Corporal Willie Loasby of the 2nd Northamptonshire Regiment to his mother on December 27, 1914. The 25-year-old tells how he started shouting to German soldiers who were just 40 yards away in the trenches a few days before Christmas. He explains how he persuaded the enemy not to shoot before bravely walking out into No Man's Land to meet...

German and British soldiers laid down arms in holiday celebration, took up soccer. As darkness crept over British and German trenches on Christmas Eve of 1914, one of history’s most astounding and heart-warming anomalies of warfare spontaneously unfolded. The German and British troops halted their fire and laid down their arms in order to sing to one another, exchange gifts, bury their dead together and according to many recollections, play friendly games of soccer in the no-man’s land that has been strewn with the bodies hours earlier. According to most accounts recorded in diaries and interviews years later, the 1914...

. . . James McIvor has found an instance in the Civil War when the animosity between the Union and Confederate soldiers also lifted, if only for the length of a single song . . . As the opposing forces settled into battle lines near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on December 30, 1862, the bands on each side played an evening concert for their respective comrades. The two concerts continued, unharmoniously enough, until, “as if by common consent,” recalled the Tennesseean, both took up “Home, Sweet Home.” The men on both sides soon joined together in singing the song. When it was...

At Christmas, 1914, there occurred several informal truces at various points along the trench-lines of Northern France and Belgium. It may well be that there were other places where truces took place, but our precise knowledge of events is limited by the amount of direct, eyewitness testimony which has so far been discovered. Nevertheless, there are enough trustworthy reports (and even a few photographs) to convince us that something extraordinary happened that first Christmas of the war, and that it was not entirely an isolated happening. The image of opposing soldiers, shaking hands with each other on one day and...

<p>It was the night before Christmas, give or take a day or two, and even in the muddy pits they called home, the troops were in merry spirits. It was December 1914, the first Christmas season of World War I, and German and English soldiers were hunkered down in trenches that slashed parallel lines across thousands of miles of European countryside. The war had come to a screeching halt -- neither side could advance, neither would retreat.</p>

As the guns of August spoke to start World War I, the British foreign secretary, Edward Grey, said, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them again in our lifetime." As a prediction, his poetic quote held up. Over the next 35 years, democracy guttered out across the continent until the Allies of World War II rolled back the darkness. But there was a moment when it almost seemed as if Lord Grey had spoken rashly. It came at Christmas in 1914. Trench lines already stretched from the Swiss border to the North Sea. But ...