Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas, 1914

Merry Christmas, 1914

On this day in 1914 the "Christmas Truce" of WWI, tentatively and spontaneously begun the previous evening at many places along the Front, held. This meant a day of anything from conversation to gift giving to soccer games to dining out:

    We ate their Sauerkraut and they [ate] our chocolate, cakes, etc. We had killed a pig just behind our lines. There were quite a lot of creatures rambling about the lines, including an old sow with a litter and lots of cattle and poetry. We cooked the pig in No Man's Land, sharing it with the Boche.

This recollection and many others are in Silent Night, by historian Stanley Weintraub (himself born on Dec. 24th, 1929).
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