Phil Williams Commentary: Christmas season brings hope that things can be different
One glance around the world in which we live can quickly give one the impression that these are not stable times. It’s a fair statement to say that the biblical reference of “wars and rumors of wars” is apropos.
At every turn, the media is filled with headlines and punditry that lead off with terms like “backlash,” “anger” and “harsh response.” One side accuses the other. Unrest occurs. Civil discourse is lost.
And then ... Christmas.
There is something absolutely different about the Christmas season. I am fully aware that not everyone believes as I do that it is the time stamp of the birth of a savior through divine intervention. But even the hardest among us are aware something different fills the air during this season of hope.
We see it in the giving of gifts, the gathering of families, time off from school and work. We see it in the stories of extra sacrifice and hard work to buy that one small gift for a child. It is evident in the wreaths on doors and lights on trees. Say what you will, but Christmas is different.
To be sure, there are those who don’t celebrate. For reasons of faith or no faith, Christmas is not everyone’s time of celebration. Families can find it a time of poignancy marked by the loss of a loved one, or an absence at the table for a service member overseas.
But underlying the story of Christmas is a hope that things can be different. That even in the lowest of times and darkest of moments, a star can light a new way forward.
Christmas has a way of changing things. As surely as the history and faith of the world changed in a lowly Bethlehem manger more than 2,000 years ago, there are still moments in time today that cannot be explained except to say the spirit of Christmas overcame the worst of circumstances.
Is it just sentiment?
No, there’s something decidedly different about the Christmas season. Something that brings together what was once apart. Something that extends a hope that tides will turn.
Like the miracle of the battlefield peace that broke out in the trenches of World War I, the Christmas truce of 1914.
Just weeks before, Pope Benedict had called for a temporary ceasefire on the lines, asking “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.” But war is where men die and things are broken. Officially, the pope’s plea was rejected by leadership of both sides.
It is said that the misery of trench warfare unapparelled in world history. On Christmas Eve 1914, in the mud and slog of the trenches in Belgium, the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment was dug in and miserable. The trenches were cold, dank and fearful. The men of the regiment had been on the line for endless days and sleepless nights. A British machine gunner named Bruce Bairnsfather later wrote that as he huddled in his freezing narrow trench, covered in mud, he began to hear singing.
German soldiers were across no man’s land in their own trenches, singing Christmas carols. There in the darkness, some of the British soldiers began singing back. Then a voice with a thick German accent called out, “Come over here!” This was not normal. This did not fit the moment. After the call was repeated, British sergeant yelled back, “You come halfway. I come halfway.”
What happened next is recorded in soldier’s diaries, letters home and dispatches from the front. Across the lines, running the length of the Western Front, groups of French, Belgian, British and German soldiers declared ceasefires and crawled up out of their fortifications to meet in the middle and celebrate Christmas.
Soldiers who had just been fighting and killing began to shake hands, sing together, swap cigarettes and cigars, pour the occasional libation and, in more than one instance, impromptu soccer games broke out. Western soldiers gave German soldiers haircuts. Men of both sides helped their enemies retrieve the dead who littered the battlefield.
British soldier J. Reading wrote home, “I shook hands with some of them, and they gave us cigarettes and cigars. We did not fire that day, and everything was so quiet it seemed like a dream.”
A German Lieutenant wrote, “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. ... Christmas, the celebration of love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”
It is not clear how many troops participated in the truce. Time Magazine wrote that up to 100,000 crossed the lines to celebrate with their enemies. High commands on both sides were said to have been shocked and disapproved of it all.
It was Christmas. Something was different.
It is said that as the day ended, a German soldier said to one rifleman of the British 3rd Rifle Brigade, “Today we have peace. Tomorrow, you fight for your country. I fight for mine. Good luck.”
A memorial was erected in England’s National Memorial Arboretum to commemorate the Christmas truce. Cast in bronze, it depicts two uniformed arms reaching out and shaking hands. In 2014, on the 100th anniversary, the English and German national teams played a match in remembrance of the men who kicked a ball together in no man’s land.
Christmas is different. It doesn’t mean that problems go away per se. But this season that we are in is one that extends hope in hopeless times. Amid it all, God saw fit to send His Son.
May God richly bless you with the hope of this season, no matter your circumstance.
Phil Williams is a former state senator from District 10 (which includes Etowah County), retired Army colonel and combat veteran, and a practicing attorney. He previously served with the leadership of the Alabama Policy Institute in Birmingham. He currently hosts the conservative news/talk show Rightside Radio on multiple channels throughout north Alabama. The opinions expressed are his own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Phil Williams on the holiday season
