Welcome to my 29 Days of Christmas! Here I celebrate all the things I love about the season!
Today it’s The Chrismas Day Truce.
The Christmas truce was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of the First World War around Christmas 1914. In the week leading up to 25 December, French, German, and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. In some areas, men from both sides ventured into no man's land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in carolling. Hostilities continued in some sectors, while in others the sides settled on little more than arrangements to recover bodies. The following year, a few units arranged ceasefires but the truces were not nearly as widespread as in 1914; this was, in part, due to strongly worded orders from commanders, prohibiting truces.