page_title: Christmas truce
section_title: Legacy and historical significance
hierarchical_section_title: Christmas truce / Legacy and historical significance
caption_attribution_description: English: Re-enactors Peter Knight and Stefan Langheinrich, descendants of Great War veterans, shake hands at the 2008 unveiling of a memorial to the 1914 Christmas Truce.
context_page_description: The Christmas truce was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of the First World War around Christmas 1914.
  The truce occurred only five months into the war. Hostilities had lulled as leadership on both sides reconsidered their strategies following the stalemate of the Race to the Sea and the indecisive result of the First Battle of Ypres. In the week leading up to 25 December, French, German, and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. In some areas, men from both sides ventured into no man's land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in carol-singing. Men played games of football with one another, creating one of the most memorable images of the truce. Hostilities continued in some sectors, while in others the sides settled on little more than arrangements to recover bodies.
  The following year, a few units arranged ceasefires but the truces were not nearly as widespread as in 1914; this was, in part, due to strongly worded orders from the high commands of both sides, prohibiting truces.
context_section_description: Although the popular tendency has been to see the December 1914 Christmas Truces as unique and of romantic rather than political significance, they have also been interpreted as part of the widespread spirit of non-co-operation with the war. In his book on trench warfare, Tony Ashworth described the 'live and let live system'. Complicated local truces and agreements not to fire at each other were negotiated by men along the front throughout the war. These often began with agreement not to attack each other at tea, meal or washing times. In some places tacit agreements became so common that sections of the front would see few casualties for extended periods of time. This system, Ashworth argues, 'gave soldiers some control over the conditions of their existence'. The December 1914 Christmas Truces then can be seen as not unique, but as the most dramatic example of spirit of non-co-operation with the war that included refusal to fight, unofficial truces, mutinies, strikes, and peace protests.
  In the 1933 play Petermann schließt Frieden oder Das Gleichnis vom deutschen Opfer (Petermann Makes Peace: or, The Parable of German Sacrifice), written by Nazi writer and World War I veteran Heinz Steguweit, a German soldier, accompanied by Christmas carols sung by his comrades, erects an illuminated Christmas tree between the trenches but is shot dead. Later, when the fellow soldiers find his body, they notice in horror that snipers have shot down every Christmas light from the tree.
  The 1967 song "Snoopy's Christmas" by the Royal Guardsmen was based on the Christmas truce. Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron), Germany's ace pilot and war hero, initiates the truce with the fictitious Snoopy.
  The 1969 film Oh! What a Lovely War includes a scene of a Christmas truce with British and German soldiers sharing jokes, alcohol and songs.
  The video for the 1983 song "Pipes of Peace" by Paul McCartney depicts a fictional version of the Christmas truce.
  John McCutcheon's 1984 song, Christmas in the Trenches, tells the story of the 1914 truce through the eyes of a fictional soldier. Performing the song he met German veterans of the truce.
  The Goodbyeee the final episode of the BBC television series Blackadder Goes Forth notes the Christmas truce, with the main character Edmund Blackadder having played in a football match. He is still annoyed at having had a goal disallowed for offside.
  The song "All Together Now" by Liverpool band The Farm took its inspiration from the Christmas Day Truce of 1914. The song was re-recorded by The Peace Collective for release in December 2014 to mark the centenary of the event.
  The 1996 song "It Could Happen Again" by country artist Collin Raye, which tells the story of the Christmas truce, is included on his Christmas album Christmas: The Gift, with a spoken intro by Johnny Cash giving the history behind the event.
  The 1997 song "Belleau Wood" by American country music artist Garth Brooks is a fictional account based on the Christmas truce.
  The truce is dramatised in the 2005 French film Joyeux Noël (English: Merry Christmas), depicted through the eyes of French, British and German soldiers. The film, written and directed by Christian Carion, was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival but was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
  In 2008, the truce was depicted on stage at the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis, in the radio musical drama All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. It was created and directed by Peter Rothstein and co-produced by Theater Latté Da and the vocal ensemble Cantus, Minneapolis-based organisations. It has continued to play at the Pantages Theater each December since its premiere.
  On 12 November 2011, the opera "Silent Night", commissioned by the Minnesota Opera, had its world premiere at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota. With libretto by Mark Campbell, based on the screenplay of the film "Joyeux Noel" and with music by Kevin Puts, it won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music and has been performed or scheduled fo
caption: British and German descendants of Great War veterans
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