The Christmas carol, “Silent Night”, was first performed on Christmas Day, 1814. The song became very popular around the world, and by 1914, a hundred years later, it had been translated into many languages. On Christmas Eve of that year, the First World War was raging in France. English and French soldiers in their trenches faced their German enemies across a “No Man’s Land” filled with barbed wire and flying bullets.
No one knows who started it, but some of the soldiers began singing “Silent Night”, and their enemies, also young, lonely and miserable, joined in, each in his own language. Before long, soldiers all along the front were singing this simple Christmas carol together. They threw down their guns, and joined each other, sharing comradeship, and even their precious goodies from home, with men they had recently been trying to kill. The whole war came to a halt for hundreds of miles.
The “Christmas Truce” of 1914 was unplanned and unofficial, but it really happened, and it lasted several days, the only time in history when a song stopped a World War. Common soldiers, responding to the spirit of Christmas, defied their officers’ orders and risked their lives for a song. Can’t our elected officials defy their party leaders and risk the next election, to work “across the aisle” for the good of their constituents?
We call on all elected officials to respond to the spirit of Christmas. Quit your fighting and come together for the good of all! If you won’t, our response must be, to
Send No One Back!
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