by John McCutcheon
copyright 1984
used with permission
Many people know about the Christmas Truce of World War 1. Much of the reason for that is this song, ” Christmas in the Trenches” by John McCutcheon.
There is much that is easy to find out about this event, too. There’s this surprising web site, the National World War 1 Museum and Memorial. This is the place where John is singing in the video. Play the video to hear John tell about some of the stories from those days. The site documents dozens of newspaper accounts of the Christmas Truce. It’s something so curious we find it fascinating. When you look just a little bit, though, you’ll see it’s easy to discover there were other examples of Christmas time truces in war. But, the Christmas of 1914 truce, which occurred up and down the lines, seems to be the one that has captured our imaginations.
There are movies, too. “Joyeux Noel,” tells about the truce itself, and 1917, long after the truce ended.
Rutger Bregman writes about the truce in his book, “Humankind.” Bregman argues that people are, generally, good. “If we can actually trust each other, if we do have the courage to move to a more realistic, hopeful view of human nature, then we can move to a very different kind of society as well — and build very different kinds of schools and democracies and workplaces,” he told NPR.
War movies have the simplest of themes: can the hero survive? We’re trying to find a journey through the war to ask a different question: Can the hero learn to trust his enemy?
We’re going to use song and story as the best way for you to learn the answer to this important question. Maybe we will convince you that he can.