The Christmas Truce of 1914

December 24th, 1914. Along the edges of the trenches, German soldiers

place candles on the parapets and on the trees around them. They begin to sing

Christmas carols into the cold night. From the opposite trenches, British voices answer

with the same songs. Soon, the gunfire fades. Soldiers step into No Man’s Land,

shaking hands, exchanging gifts — cigarettes, buttons, food.

For days, the story is censored by military authorities and kept out of the press.

Then, on December 31st, 1914, The New York Times reports the truce.

From that moment, the story travels around the world. For one night, the war stopped