It was one hundred years ago this Christmas. In the trenches of France, the fighting stopped. Unbelievably, it really DID happen. I don't know if the fighters would have acted differently had they known what would pass in the century after their acts. My own grandfather fought for King and Country. Merry Christmas, and let us remember those that came before us this Christmas, as memorialized in this John McCutcheon song. While there's no Santa, I think it well worth the listen for a different sort of spirit. It was a time that may not come again in our lifetimes, but perhaps once again...
19 hours ago
8 comments:
Fantastic. Much thanks, and merry Christmas, Steve!
Wonderful way to wake up on Christmas Eve. Thanks for the thoughts, Steve, and Merry Christmas to all.
Merry Christmas Steve.
Steve, you might like this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/travel/in-france-vestiges-of-the-great-wars-bloody-end.html
Hey Steve,
Nice song by McCutcheon that reminded me of John Lenon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) - http://youtu.be/yN4Uu0OlmTg.
I will be perfectly okay if there were any more wars ever again.
I am gonna keep wishing for the same.
Have a Beautiful Day!
Peace :)
The story of the Christmas truce has come to piss me off over the years. The next day, everyone got back to their jobs and pursued the worst slaughter the world had ever seen for another three years. And just over 20 years after that the next generation started on the project to top them. The truce is held up as this wonderful example of humanity, but few people see it as the example it really is: that soldiers who had met in peace could turn right around and go back to following the orders to slaughter each other, and that their leaders would give those orders and force compliance with threats of summary execution for desertion tells us a lot about humanity and the human ability to reconcile the irreconcilable in the pursuit of destructive conflict.
I can agree that the truce was imperfect and fleeting, but it DID take place with no official sanction, and the troops had to be threatened in order to "get back to the job." Nowadays, nobody in the killing business even seems to notice Christmas. Some, like ISIS, even seem to use the time for extra beheadings.
WWI was over oil, not religion. There were really no cultural differences between the antagonists. Hell, the British royal family was German.
As a species we never seem to learn from these moments of peace. There are people who actually like war and violence and are perfectly willing to take their lumps when the time comes for the sake of getting to dish them out while they can.
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