Christmas in No Man’s Land
by Joe Leavell
Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images
It was a cold December night in the trenches of Belgium. After six months of fighting, the Great War was only expanding in scope as the year of 1914 drew towards its end. Everyone had thought it would be a quick war, but now the trenches had been dug deep while the enemies fortified their positions.
British machine gunner, Bruce Bairnsfather, of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, was trying to keep warm with his fellow soldiers on Christmas Eve. While they had grown accustomed to a constant state of fear, through random shelling and maneuvering from the Germans, this night was eerily quiet.
Everyone was on edge. Were the Germans planning a Christmas attack? Maybe it would be a quiet night after all? One could only hope.
As they hunkered down in their trench, they heard the sound of voices on the wind coming from across “No Man’s Land,” that terrain that no one dared enter for fear of being shot. They were used to the taunts of the Germans.
This sound was different.
It was the sound of singing.
In his diary, Bairnsfather recorded that it was not random singing. The Germans were singing Christmas carols! He and his friends knew these songs, even though they were being sung in a different language. Some of the soldiers along their battle lines began to join in the chorus of “Silent Night.” One side sang in English, and the other in German.
The songs continued until they heard a German shouting in broken English across the empty void, “Come over here!”
Was this some sort of trick to lure them out of their positions of safety? The German shouted out the invitation again.
This time, one of the British soldiers replied. “You come halfway, and we’ll meet you there!”
The Germans agreed. Laying down their weapons, a small band of German and British soldiers, inspired by the spirit of Christmas, ventured out into the middle of a cold battlefield facing each other.
There was no animosity between them. There was no sign of anger or resentment in their eyes. According to Bairnsfather, “There was not an atom of hate on either side.” These were poor young soldiers hoping for a swift end to the war, and a quick return home to their family and friends.
These men who had been shooting at each other just hours before did the unthinkable on the night before Christmas. They smiled at each other. Some of them shook hands, and they declared a Christmas truce between soldiers.
The peace was infectious! More men joined in and they began to talk with each other, trade cigarettes, food, and stories with each other. More carols were sung together, and the peace continued to spread randomly across the lines.
Known as “The Christmas Truce” of 1914, it is estimated that upwards of 100,000 soldiers participated in “Christmas in No Man’s Land” in different areas across its breadth. There are records of barbers who set up haircutting stations, and others engaged in fiercely competitive soccer matches. In some places, the truce lasted for days as the spirit of the peace of Christmas time invaded the desolate land where on any other day, no one would dare enter for fear of death.
German Lieutenant, Kurt Zehmish said it well in his memoirs, “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was…Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”
Peace.
For one moment in time, they experienced a communal identity that transcended the petty kings of the countries they served. However brief it lasted, their shared belief that the King of Kings took on humanity as a baby took precedence over guns and bullets. God had taken on human flesh and dwelt among us as a man, and this was the truth that brought days of peace to no man’s land.
The Gospel Comes to No Man’s Land
The sad reality is that even our great and terrible wars with each other are simply the fallout skirmishes of an even longer and greater war.
Humans declared war on God Himself.
You and I were born into a world that extends back countless generations of selfish kingdom seekers who wish to be autonomous rulers over our small part of God’s kingdom. We each willfully joined their ranks as we seek our own small kingdom, with the empty promise of independence apart from God’s rule. We want to be deities in our own right, and in doing so, we work to usurp the Throne of the only capable and rightful Ruler.
From the first generation of mankind, lines were drawn between heaven and earth, and we entrenched ourselves in our sin and rebellion. We lobbed insults and curses at our rightful King. The mighty gulf between God and mankind stood as desolate as no man’s land.
It was not smart for us to declare war on the One who we are dependent upon to take our very next breath, but God had other plans. We could have been defeated instantly, if He had chosen.
His song of promise came to us, spoken from God from across the chasm. A carol of a promised redemption for His people. The melody continued, and was written down through the generations as his plan unfolded. He sang a song that offered peace from His side of the trench while we fired upon the carolers and killed his prophets. Humanity caught and sawed in half the very messenger who wrote of the promised child who would be called, “The Prince of Peace.”
Yet, the warfare of our hellish ways did not stop His song of love and peace. When the time was right, His angels sang in harmony to a field of shepherds a song of “peace among those with whom he is pleased.”
On that Christmas night, the angels declared the “good news of great joy” that God Himself had stepped out into no man’s land, coming not as a General, but as a baby. Born of a virgin, Jesus had taken on flesh, took on the very uniform of the ones who had declared themselves to be the sworn enemy of God.
Why Would Jesus Enter No Man’s Land?
Jesus needed that sinless human body so that He could become the eternal reconciliation between the Father, and those who accept His terms of peace. In His life and by His death, Jesus took the punishment for our treason, and allowed God and man to both fire upon Him. We betrayed His innocent blood by condemning Him to a horrible cross to die, and God Himself poured out His wrath for our sin upon His own Son. He thereby formally offered us reconciliation.
The terms of this New Covenant in His blood that bought our peace was accepted by God, and Jesus was raised from the dead. In love, God offers His hand of lasting peace to his enemies, and will grant redemption and restoration of eternal life with Him in peace as a part of His family to all who accept it.
For those who do not, they remain fixed in their trenches, flaunting their rebellion at a God who already conquered death itself. One day, He will make swift work by honoring the wishes of those who only lust for war with Him.
Following Jesus Into No Man’s Land
Sadly, not everyone was happy with this Christmas truce. Leaders in the armies decried their army’s lack of fervor for their cause. One young soldier chided his fellow German soldiers by saying, “Such a thing should not happen in wartime. Have you no German sense of honor left?” The soldier’s name? Adolf Hitler.
The peace of Christmas in no man’s land broke down quickly and the soldiers were goaded back into war. No other peaceful Christmas was recorded during WWI. The message of the hope of Christmas was quickly forgotten and the result was catastrophic death. When all was done, the Great War took the lives of almost 20 million people worldwide. The exhausted absence of war that followed was relatively short and in the worldwide conflict that followed mere decades later, another estimated 40-50 million human lives were destroyed.
The destruction wrought by those who refuse the peace of Christmas is unfathomable.
While the Great Wars have come and gone, you and I still face other aspects of the fallout of our world’s rebellion to God in our generation. Peace continues to be illusive as we squabble over who gets to rule our little kingdoms. Civilization itself is being picked at by the seams.
We see this more than just between countries, but in relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and between friends and relatives. Horribly, we even see this forgetfulness of the peace of Christmas between Christians and churches.
Little wars between us continue to break out and we quickly draw up battle lines and dig our trenches. We lob insults over social media, cutting remarks across the kitchen table, and separate into ever dwindling armies that seek first our own kingdoms and our own selfishness. Sadness, broken relationships, warfare and its destruction is our reward.
As we sing the carols from our trenches this year, will we be the ones to remember the Savior who left heaven to cross into no man’s land with terms of peace? Will we peak over the fortifications, call out to the other side and offer lasting peace that only comes through Christ? The chasm has already been crossed. No man’s land has been braved by the Son of God who came to bring peace for you and for me.
This is the power and message of Christmas that genuinely has the ability to stop a world war if we would but remember it. Our Prince of peace gives the power to offer peace to your spouse, your neighbor, your parents, etc. God’s peace on earth reconciles the bitterest of enemies, if only one would follow Jesus into no man’s land with His blood-signed Covenant. Like Jesus, we may be met with insults and jeers or worse. But just maybe, the peace will be infectious. We may find ourselves in a soccer match or swapping stories like old friends.
Jesus will one day return, and all war will be over, oppression will cease, and peace will be eternally realized. Until that day, will you dare to follow Jesus into no man’s land as a peacemaker?
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” - Jesus
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
For Further Study:
https://www.history.com/news/christmas-truce-1914-world-war-i-soldier-accounts
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-real-story-of-the-christmas-truce
https://www.britannica.com/event/The-Christmas-Truce
