First World War truce is what Christmas is all about – Stephen Jardine

Here we go again. For those of us lucky enough to have been spared to see it for another year, the big day beckons. But before that, there is something even more magical.

The Christmas truce between British and German troops on the Western Front lasted into January in some places (Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Christmas Eve is the day the world slows down. The frantic pace of life is interrupted by the countdown to tomorrow. If Christmas is changing, starting earlier and getting even more commercial, by now none of that matters.

Despite all that divides us, something is about to unite us, that familiar anticipation we felt as young children and still recognise today. Out and about, you can sense it. Did you know a driver is twice as likely to be allowed out onto a main road by another motorist on Christmas Eve? I’ve no idea if that is true but it feels like it could be.

Christmas Eve is the day we try to be the people we always hoped we would be. If tomorrow is about presents, food and family, today is about counting our blessings. Anyone who has experienced pain or loss this year will recognise this.

We don’t measure our lives in visits to the supermarket or episodes of Strictly but we do all think back to Christmas down the years, safe in the knowledge that, one December, it will be our last.

The story of the First World War Christmas Day truce has been well told but what is less well known is that it actually started the night before when British troops saw candle lanterns on the German parapets and heard Stille Nacht drifting over no man’s land. What followed was the real spirit of Christmas and what led to it can only have been that shivery intimation that we are simply passengers in time and space.

Christmas has changed so much in the century since. With £600 Swarovski advent calendars and Heston Blumenthal pear-and-fig mince pies, excess is everywhere but is that what we really want?

If Covid started the Christmas shake-up, the cost-of-living crisis has come along to complete the job. From the toned down TV ads to the number of families doing secret Santa or setting agreed budgets per head, there is a real sense that things are different this year.

Even those people who have capacity for ostentation are probably reading the room and realising that when people are having to choose between heating or eating, conspicuous spending is not a good look.

The British and German soldiers who met between the trenches swapped the little they had, some chocolate, a little rolling tobacco. What mattered was not the gift but the sharing – and something else. They had been told the war would be over by Christmas, it wasn’t but unlike so many who had died, they were at least alive to share another Christmas Day.

We all have too much stuff in our lives, what we really need is more of that spirit. The fact that they could find it amidst the horror and bloodshed of war is encouraging for the rest of us and testament to the power of the human spirit. When the church bells ring tonight and the magic happens again, it happens in our hearts, not thanks to the gifts under the tree. Have a very Happy Christmas.