It started with a father playing a CD to his seven-month-old daughter. As they listened to the collection of songs sung about the Christmas Truce of World War I, stay at home dad Christian Skoorsmith realized this year will be the 95th anniversary of the famous 1914 event. In less than two months he's organized a diverse Christmas Eve service here in Seattle to celebrate the anniversary.
Skoorsmith was captivated much earlier by what he calls a "victory of peace in the most unlikely of places," when he visited the former battlefield near Ypres, Belgium. There, in the first year of the war, German, British, and French troops called a truce on Dec. 24, all along a front stretching 1,000 miles.
Historians have documented how the Germans set up a few Christmas trees along their trenches and started singing carols. The other side responded with carols in their own languages. The Germans sent a chocolate cake over to their adversaries, along with a cease fire request. With a gift of tobacco, the Allies accepted. At various places along the front, soldiers from both sides ventured into "no man's land" and helped each other retrieve and bury the dead. They then talked, in sign language if nothing else, shared cigarrettes and trinkets, and kicked around a makeshift soccer ball.
Leaders from the local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities will participate in the Christmas Eve service at Highland Park Community of Christ in West Seattle to celebrate the 1914 truce. The program will include songs, readings and images from the historic event, as well as prayers and words of peace. Skoorsmith wanted the service to be as diverse as possible since different religions and races were on the front lines at the original Christmas truce: Hindus and Sikhs from India fighting for Great Britian, Turks from the Ottoman Empire alongside the Germans, and North African Muslims fighting with the French.
Alongside the diverse religious perspectives offered at the service will be that of Chris King, president of the Seattle chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. King says he was inspired to participate by thinking of his favorite philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who was jailed in England for his protests of the war.
"The longing for peace is as much a secular desire as a religious one," said King, who celebrates Christmas as a cultural holiday.
In many places along the front, the 1914 truce lasted all the way until New Year's Day, when commanders on both sides ordered the fighting to resume. Skoorsmith, who has studied the event extensively, said, "It destroyed the soldiers' will to fight," since they had met the men they were supposed to kill and discovered their shared humanity. In some cases, military leaders withdrew whole units and moved them to other fronts. They were replaced by new troops who were not resistant to shooting. The war continued through three more Christmases and the generals worked to make sure such a truce did not happen again.
"Truces happened on the fronts all the time," Skoorsmith says, but this one had the potential to last. It's possible, he says, that the soldiers could have ended the war from the ground up, since they saw that the propaganda demonizing the enemy wasn't true. But the war did go on, turning into one of the deadliest in history. On the cusp of a technological revolution, World War I started out with the enemy still visible face to face, with trenches separated by as little as 30-70 yards.
"Warfare for us is so much different," Skoorsmith says. He calls the Christmas Truce a "last gasp of humanity in this rush to mechanize warfare."
The 1914 Christmas truce has inspired mulitple folk songs, one of which will be performed at the West Seattle service, as well as books and films. While the commemoration carries an "implicit criticism of continuing to engage in wars," Skoorsmith emphasized that the event is "pro-soldiers" since it will honor an event carried out entirely by enlisted men.
In explaining his motivation for organizing the service Skoorsmith returned to his infant daughter: "I wanted her to grow up celebrating these kinds of events."
Remembering the Truce:
The 95th anniversary of the Christmas Truce will be observed in a free, non-denominational service at the Highland Park Community of Christ, 8611 11th Ave. SW, at 7 p.m. on Thurs., Dec. 24. Doors open at 6 p.m. For more information: {encode="[email protected]" title="[email protected]"}