In June of 1910, a number of evangelical, protestant denominations, associations, and representatives met in Edinburgh, Scotland for the 3rd “World Missions Conference.” One of the men presiding over the conference was John Mott, a Methodist leader of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). A primary catchphrase of the conference came from a book Mott published in 1900, The Evangelization of the World in Our Generation. A central objective over the 10 days of meeting was to discuss and strategize the evangelization of the non-Christian world. This goal was to be accomplished with great ecumenicism and the coordinated cooperation of Americans, French, British, Germans, and Chinese, among many other nationalities.
While Mott wasn’t trying to promote a particular eschatology or a “Christianization” of the world’s nations, his was a time of great optimism for the church globally. Private funding sources and the goodwill of Western nations saw mission efforts spread far and wide. The introduction of Christianity to previously unreached areas of the globe by men like David Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, and John Paton in so short a time gave reason for excitement about the preeminence of Christianity across the face of the earth.
Only four short years later, the Western nations represented at the 1910 World Missionary Conference would be engaged in the greatest mass slaughter up to that point in history. Many men who could have been sent out to the corners of the world for the cause of Christ would instead lie in pools of their own blood, defending against propoganzied threats hastily created to bolster the war effort. England and Germany, two of the most well-organized and supportive of foreign missions efforts, now sent their young men to trenches to butcher one another.
The End of Optimism
Because the Second World War contained so many unprecedented horrors, WWI is often overshadowed compared to its sequel. However, grasping the profound theological and philosophical effects of the conflict is crucial to understanding the world that Christians inhabit today. WWI shattered the optimism that led to events like the 1910 World Missionary Conference. It left a generation of young men scarred and initiated the bloodiest century in human history. C.S. Lewis’s words on his personal feelings about the War are poignant:
My memories of the last war haunted my dreams for years. Military service, to be plain, includes the threat of every temporal evil; pain and death which is what we fear from sickness; isolation from those we love which is what we fear from exile: toil under arbitrary masters, injustice, humiliation, which is what we fear from slavery: hunger, thirst and exposure is what we fear from poverty. I’m not a pacifist. If it’s got to be it’s got to be. But the flesh is weak and selfish and I think death would be much better than to live through another war. – Letters from C.S. Lewis
J. K. Popham, a Pastor in Brighton, England, and editor of the Gospel Standard at the time of the War echoed a similar sentiment:
What pen will be able to describe the extent, the depth of the woe created by the war in which we are parties? Lands drenched with blood of men; rivers reddened with human gore and choked with corpses; cities and villages heaps of blackened stones and charred timbers; the seas turned into graves for ships that floated as so many cities; widows and fatherless children numberless, whose hearts are throbbing with helpless, hopeless anguish; the financial world full of confusion, ruin and misery, the world’s wealth wasted in the combatants’ fierce attempts to annihilate each other. Oh woe! Enough to make the sun blush that ever he shone on men as vile as to make the fair creation groan in desolation! For a few miles of territory, for a day’s power over men a man will plunge the whole world into a black night of sorrow. (Gospel Standard, pp.5-6).
Hope Amid Disaster
Much ink has been spilled on the disastrous consequences of WWI. From the rise of the Soviets in Russia to the Armenian Genocide to the fact that it spawned WWII, the Great War’s tragedy reverberates in a way that still touches us today. But often within earth-shattering tragedies are found the most clear and vibrant pictures of hope, goodwill, and God’s grace towards men. One of the most profound expressions of these occurred at Christmas on the Western Front in 1914.
The Western Front quickly reached an impasse in the fall of 1914, an entrenched stalemate maintained by Germany on one side and Great Britain, France, and a wide array of lesser powers on the other. Ninety-nine years had passed since Waterloo, and conflicts in Europe had been contested on a much smaller scale over the 19th century, with much of the political tension between European powers exported to foreign colonies (with a notable exception of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871). The expectation, as so often is in the initial phase of any war, was that all the soldiers would be “home by Christmas.” But when Advent arrived in December of 1914, the war was still just beginning. Millions were still yet to be massacred.
No one really knows the extent of the unofficial truce that took place between the soldiers on the Western Front, but it was a widespread event. Some areas of the trench line running down Belgium and Eastern France continued to shell and shoot one another for the whole holiday, but in many places, the fighting ceased for shared festivities. A glimmer of goodwill started to shine and grew over Christmas Day in Western Europe.
“It was good to have peace on Christmas Day”
As would be the norm over the next four years, bodies littered the no-man’s-land between the opposing trenches. Mercifully, a frosty chill fell over the front on Christmas Eve, and so the stench of death was not so palpable. Some specific truces were organized on Christmas Eve. In some sections, German, French, and British soldiers held worship services together. Carols were sung in individual tongues though sharing melodies. Wine, chocolate, and food rations were exchanged and enjoyed together. The next morning, football matches were held, more merry-making was enjoyed, and a joint effort was made to gather and bury the dead. An account from a British officer encapsulates the scene that played out along the front:
The digging completed, the shallow graves were filled in and the German officers remained to pay their tribute of respect while our chaplain read a short service. It was one of the most impressive things I have ever witnessed. Friend and foe stood side by side, bare-headed, watching the full, grave figure of the padre outlined against the frosty landscape as he blessed the poor broken bodies at his feet. – Unidentified officer, reported in North Mail, January 6, 1915
An account from the son of an English congregation minister illustrates further:
We had a mutual understanding with the Germans not to shoot, and went out past our firing line, talking to them and exchanging greetings, chocolate, and cigarettes, and we also sang carols and hymns at their request. It was good to have peace on Christmas Day. – Corporal A. Ashford, reported in the Essex County Chronicle, January 15, 1915
Other Truces
The Christmas Truce of 1914 isn’t the only example of soldiers putting aside their struggle against each other to take time to commemorate Christ’s birth. Revered John Paxton, a Union veteran told a story of a similar event taking place along the picket line in Northern Virginia, shortly after the Battle of Fredricksburg. Southerner and Northerner, locked in a bloody-brother war, ceased hostilities to talk, trade, and wish each other a Merry Christmas. Paxton wrote:
We had bridged the river, spanned the bloody chasm. We were brothers, not goes, waving salutations of good-will in the name of the Babe of Bethlehem, on Christmas Day in ’62. At the very front of the opposing armies, the Christ Child struck a truce of us, broke down the wall of partition, became our peace. We exchanged gifts. We shouted greetings back and forth. We kept Christmas and our hears were lighter of it, and our shivering bodes were not quite so cold.
In Christmas of 1944, similar events happened in Huertgen Forest during the Battle of the Bulge. Though not as widespread as the Truce of 1914, temporary cease-fires were organized to evacuate wounded from the German and American forces. An incredible event happened in the same forest several weeks later on Christmas Eve, when several American and German soldiers celebrated Christmas together with a German woman and her son, Fritz. After the war, Fritz recalled:
I noticed that there were tears in her eyes as she said the old, familiar words, ‘Komm, Herr Jesus. Be our guest.’ And as I looked around the table, I saw tears, too, in the eyes of the battle-weary soldiers, boys again, some from America, some from Germany, all far from home. Just before midnight, Mother went to the doorstep and asked us to join her to look up at the Star of Bethlehem. We all stood beside her except Harry, who was sleeping. For all of us during the moment of silence, looking at the brightest star in the heavens, the war was a distant, almost-forgotten thing.
The truce held through the morning, Christmas Day, when the two sets of soldiers shook hands and departed, each headed back to their own army.
“…the war was a distant, almost forgotten thing”
It’s hard not to be affected by the image of men who were attempting to kill each other only hours before putting their rifles down to carry out the sacred task of burying the dead, but also celebrating the most central, important element of their shared cultures: Christ. The Truce of 1914, as well as its similar iterations, was an event that only could have happened among men who mutually valued Christmas and what it celebrates. As the angel declared, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men! – Luke 2:14, (KJV)
Some have a deeply emotional, visceral reaction to the events of the Christmas Truce. Others respond with anger at the circumstances the men in the trenches found themselves in. After all, what was the point of the slaughter? A century later, World War I is almost universally recognized as a largely purposeless endeavor. Millions were sent to a bloodbath that simply set off a chain reaction of other terrible, violent events. Perhaps, on a political level, this is essentially true.
But for the Christian, these events were not purposeless. God is “working all things together for the good of those who are called according to His purpose.” The many Christian men who fought, sweat, bled, and died in the trenches were not out of His plan. He was and is moving within history to bring about His purposes. The Christmas Truce demonstrates the power of the words of Scripture, most notably, from the Sermon on the Mount: But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. – Matthew 5:43-48 (NASB1995) What other faith can cause men to treat their enemies as brothers? In who else’s name can hostility suddenly be turned into goodwill?
Reflecting on the Christmas Truce is an opportunity to recognize that in a time of great turmoil, chaos, and carnage, there are forces at work that far outweigh the catastrophes we create in our world. Men, many with nefarious purposes, intended for those under their command to dash each other to pieces. Instead, they broke bread and worshiped together.
No matter what happens in our lives or our world, all things are overshadowed by the baby who was born on the first Christmas.
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong, And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.
