One of My Favorite Christmas Stories

One of My Favorite Christmas Stories

Luke 2:14 KJV
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

   There are thousands of Christmas stories, some true and some fiction, touching on many aspects of the Advent season.  Of all of them, perhaps my favorite is an unusual one from way back in 1914 during the first year of bloody fighting in World War One.  The Germans were locked in a near-stalemate with the British, the Belgians and the French along a long border from Belgium to southern France.
   On Christmas Eve in Belgium, along a line where the British and the Germans faced each other, the common soldiers on each side crouched in their muddy trenches amid the lice and rats.  They were cold and wet and miserable.  There was a standing order on both sides to shoot any enemy soldier on sight.
   On Christmas Eve, some German soldiers put up small trees decorated with candles on the parapets of their trenches.  As the day went on, hundreds of these Christmas trees lighted the German trenches.  Then a Christmas miracle happened – the soldiers decided not to kill each other.
   During the day the British heard singing coming from the German side.  Although they didn’t understand the words, the tunes were familiar Christmas hymns.  Once in a while a heavily accented voice would shout, “a happy Christmas to you Englishmen!”  Glad to send Christmas greeting back, the British began to call back, “Same to you, Fritz!”  One young British soldier wrote home that in his part of the line, the Germans sang “Silent Night,” and when they finished the British began singing “The First Noel.”  Back came “O Tannenbaum.”  They replied with “O Come All Ye Faithful.”  The Germans answered back with “Adeste Fidéles.”
   German soldiers began yelling over to their enemy, "Tommy, you come over and see us!  We will not fire at you and you don’t fire at us."  A few from both sides climbed up ladders and carefully went over the barbed wire and met in the middle of “No Man’s Land.”  Officers from both sides met and came back to tell everyone that there would be no firing at the other side until midnight the next day, Christmas Day.  This truce was not officially sanctified nor organized, and yet it quickly spread up and down the line.  The soldiers built fires and exchanged tea and coffee, cigarettes and cigars, canned meat, fruit, booze and newspapers.  They laughed at the propaganda written in the other side’s news and drank toasts to each other’s families and friends and sang more Christmas carols.  
   While the Christmas truce was going on, crews from both sides buried their fallen comrades.   Both British and German soldiers sorted through the bodies and in a few cases joint services were held for the dead from both sides.
   One thing I read over and over in stories of this truce was that the soldiers from both sides were surprised to find out how much they had in common; that they were more alike than either side knew.
   In many years I’ve had occasion to attend Christmas services in other churches and it has always been a fun time visiting with other Christians.  I’ve been pleased to see that I have more in common with them than differences.  I’ve not always been comfortable with some parts of their services but as long as we agree about Jesus and His birth, death and resurrection, we can have fellowship together.
   Sadly, much like the Christmas Truce of 1914, most of the time the only way we’d even consider visiting another church is during the Christmas season.  We hunker down in our own trenches the rest of the year and lob verbal bombs at others and happily shoot the other side any time we see a weak spot.  And God help the wounded because we don’t.
   That church you drive by on the way to your church?  You know, the one that’s too loud, or too quiet, or too weird, or too mean, or the preacher wears a funny robe?  The saints there are pretty much just like you.

Stephen Cram                                 December 18, 2011                     Colossians 2:8

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.  Colossians 2:8