Live and Let Live – a Christmas Truce

There are many ways to celebrate and remember Christmas. On this first day of Christmas (we do all learn in school through song that there’s 12 days of Christmas?) we could look at the birthplace of Messiach Yeshuah (Jesus – or Joshua – the Messiah) where Christians have can’t peacefully pray in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, and the last Christian city in the West Bank is being destroyed by Israeli settlers.

There are other ways to look at Christmas.

I’m currently watching Victoria on Netflix, and it is fascinating to think of history and the line of succession. Royalty married royalty, and a lot of royalty through the years have marry their cousins and close relations. Most of Queen Victoria’s children married royalty throughout Europe, and when the First World War (the “Great War” or the “War to End All Wars”) began just a decade after her death many of the countries fighting were led by first cousins descendant from Victoria.

The war was declared by cousins, but not fought by them.

When the trench warfare begin in August 1914 officials said they thought the fighting would be over by Christmas. It didn’t end on Christmas, but the Christmas of 1914 became famous for the Christmas Truce where German and English soldiers stopped fighting for a day.

Some lower ranking British officers told their men to not fire unless fired on. This became known as a “live and let live” policy.

Britannica.com describes the Christmas Truce this way: “British soldiers wrote of playing football (soccer) and sharing food and drink with men who had been, just a day earlier, their mortal enemies.”

The Christmas Truce of 1914 wasn’t that long ago. Many of us had great-grandparents alive at that time. Many American Civil War Veterans were still alive.

The soldiers who fought the First World War stopped fighting for a day and realized they had more common with the people they were fighting than their own commanders.

Think what you have you in common with the people our government is fighting against across the globe – the Middle East, South America, Africa … – and do what you can to call for a Truce every day.