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The sun was sinking slowly into the darkened silhouette of the city a few miles to the west. Its red glow was casting long, stretched-out shadows over the desolate fields that lay just east of town.

Another day was nearly done.

And another year was coming to an end.

It was very cold, and Emerson Dustmire shivered beneath his sheepskin overcoat as he trudged wearily up the dirt road that wound on ahead of him. His broad, wind-burned face was determined and stoic, and only his eyes revealed the restless energy that burned underneath as they darted frantically back and forth, from north to south, scanning the horizon for any sign of danger.

He still had about two miles to cover before reaching his destination, and even though he was freezing, he would still pause every now and then to look back at the sunset behind the city.

Before too long, he would be back in that terrible place that he could only escape through either the magic of sleep—when it could be found—or whenever it was his turn to carry dispatches between the frontline, and the couriers that were lodged in the suburbs that he had just left.

It wasn’t often that something as beautiful as that sunset made itself visible to the human-beings who were wallowing in all the mud, and blood, and filth far below.

You had to appreciate these things when they came along.

The sunlight, and the small bit of warmth that still reached his face after traveling a hundred million miles through space—was, almost, the only reminder that there was something greater above it all—something untouched by the mess that man was making of things down here on the Earth.

Emerson adjusted the dense pack that was slung tightly over his shoulders, sighed heavily to himself as he turned back around, and then continued following the dirt road that was unfurling itself into the Belgian countryside.

He was a long way from home.

A long way from Oxfordshire, a long way from the University, and from people who cared about useless facts, like how many miles of space were in between the Earth and the Sun.

He was a long way from his mother’s concerned voice, and the smell of his father’s pipe after dinner on the last night he had seen them.

He was a long way from his fiancé, the love of his life that he had left behind with nothing but a promise that he would be back soon.

They were all behind him somewhere, hundreds of miles away, back in the civilized world, where men were still human.

That civilized world was slowly becoming a hazy memory as it gave way to the misery of his present living situation. He was now an inhabitant of the world where civilization disappears into the jungle. The only laws here were those of survival. The only magistrates were the rats, waiting to devour you for the slightest infraction.

The war had only begun about four months earlier, and everyone had said that it would be over by Christmas. But here it was, December the 24^th, and all hope for a swift conclusion had begun to fade away with the passing of Summer, and been lost entirely with the passing of Autumn.

Emerson Dustmire was part of the 2^nd Battalion of light infantry from Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire—which made up the larger portion of the British Expeditionary Force. They had been sent to Paris at the end of August and helped save the city from being overrun by the Germans during the first week of September. From there they had marched north into the French countryside, and then up into Belgium until reaching the town of Iper.

Emerson’s days had melted into a hazy mixture of marching, digging, marching, digging, marching, digging… the monotony of it all was interrupted, here and there, by brief, but deadly skirmishes – short, battles that sprung up quickly as the Germans sought to maneuver around the French and British troops that kept meeting and repelling their advances.

Both sides kept up this senseless ballet of death with each other until they ran out of land to fight over.

With nothing but the Sea to the North, and the Alps on the southern end of the line, millions of men began digging into the earth and creating nearly impenetrable defensive positions.

Emerson’s company had received their orders to stop marching and dig in about a month earlier. So here they were, bogged down in the swampy lowlands of West Flanders, slowly sinking into the mud.

Emerson moved on, thinking of little else except putting one foot in front of the other.

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.

His mind began to drift, and he found himself thinking again of his home that was so far away.

He had been led to believe that the war he was fighting was necessary to keep his home and his family safe—a final war, to end all wars and bring an everlasting peace to humanity.

Emerson knew that it was all a load of nonsense. But what choice did he have? They told him he had to go fight. So, he went.

As he crested a small rise in the terrain, the wind shifted and he was struck immediately with the reality of his situation.

Visually speaking, everything seemed in order.

He had reached the medical tents that were situated at the very back of the encampment, several hundred yards away from the trenches on the front lines. Everything was arranged in nice, neat rows, packed tightly together in perfect formation. But with the shift in the wind, the smell had reached Emerson once more—the smell that he hated more than anything.

It wasn’t the medical tents.

It wasn’t the hastily pitched horse stables, or the pig sties on the far end of the encampment.

It was, simply put, the smell of death that swirled through the air and permeated everything it touched.

It was inescapable.

Thousands of men had died in the fighting that took place between the two armies, and most of them could not be retrieved for proper burial.

And so they lay, out in the open, slowly being dissolved by the rats, and the worms, and the rain, with the muddy bacterial bogs absorbing what was left of them.

Emerson trudged on through the rows of medical tents, then began working his way past the French officers and reconnaissance units, past the artillery positions situated on the peripheral, and then finally, after another hundred yards of open field, he began a slow, steady climb up toward the back end of the fortifications that led toward the trenches.

His anxiety was beginning to build.

His heart was beating faster, he was taking larger gulps of air to catch his breath, and despite the chillness in the air, he was beginning to sweat.

It wasn’t his body that was tired and exhausted—it was his mind.

God did not design the human brain to endure the kind of sustained, perpetual waves of stress that man’s technological advances in war-making had conjured up for these modern battlefields.

The constant, sporadic, and unpredictable barrages of artillery shells from the Germans were an ever-present source of fear hovering over every human being and animal in range of their destruction.

Emerson Dustmire’s nerves, like so many others, were fraying under the strain of coping with the thought that either his life would end at any moment, or he could suffer some kind of ghastly wound that would leave him maimed for the rest of his life.

And what was it all for?

Why was all of this happening?

Was there ANY ANSWER to those two questions that could adequately justify the need for millions of Christian men to draw up battle lines against each other and commence with a kind of slaughter that the world had never seen before?

It wasn’t like this was the first time that this sort of thing had happened in human history.

The American Civil War had consisted of Christian killing Christian. Even in Europe, 400 years earlier, in the very place that Emerson now found himself, Catholic and Protestant armies had clashed with one another over theological details that no one could prove or disprove.

As bad as those conflicts were, however, they were nowhere near as devastating as this one had been in only four months of fighting.

Human beings had learned, from somewhere, how to go about killing one another with ease, efficiency, and indifference, in a way that had never happened until now.

Emerson mused to himself that he was feeling a bit like Longfellow who must have been thinking about something similar when he’d written that famous hymn: “And in despair I bowed my head: ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said, ‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.’

As he approached the back entrance to the dugout, Emerson exchanged a brief glance and a nod with the sentry on guard duty.

“Any news from town?” the old sentry asked as Emerson moved past him.

“Yes,” Emerson replied enthusiastically, and with a sarcastic grin on his face he threw his hands in the air and exclaimed as loudly as he could – “The war is going to be over by Christmas!”

He didn’t stop to hear what the old sentry shouted back to him, but he knew it wasn’t nice, and he knew he deserved such a retort.

When he returned to his section of the great trench, he was greeted silently by two of his buddies from 3^rd corps. After exchanging a few words about the weather and tossing them the two cartons of cigars that he had been tasked with retrieving, he slung off his backpack, leaned his rifle against one side of the large tree root that protruded from the side of the trench, and then sat down on a small stack of empty food crates.

He leaned his head back, and gazed up at the night sky.

The sun had finally set, leaving only the deep blue of the heavens pinpointed by millions of stars.

Finally at peace, for a few seconds, he leaned against the side of the earthen wall, pulled his coat around him as tightly as possible, stuffed his hands into his armpits and closed his eyes. Just for a few moments he thought to himself, maybe I can get a little sleep.

When he awoke from his brief slumber he was immediately aware that something was terribly wrong.

Everything was quiet.

Everything was too quiet.

There was no exploding of artillery shells, no cracking of isolated sniper bullets, no cries of men yelling back and forth along the line for ammunition, or food, or cigarettes—there was nothing at all of the normal everyday sounds that had come to define life under these conditions at all hours of the day and night.

Emerson looked around in the darkness for his squad mate Charles, and was shocked to find him halfway up the ladder, peering over the top of the trench, his head completely exposed to enemy fire.

He started to protest, but Charles quickly motioned for him to be quiet.

He leaned down toward Emerson, put a finger to his mouth, and whispered one word to him: “Listen.”

He pointed in the direction of the German lines.

Confused, and still in a daze from his nap, that wasn’t long enough, he sat quietly for a few seconds. Then he removed his helmet and tilted his head to one side.

He heard something, but what was it?

Voices, he thought… not very many voices… but someone was singing.

It was barely discernible at first, and then, slowly, it grew louder.

Then other voices joined in the singing, and a familiar harmony rose into the air above the frozen battlefield. The words sounded different, of course, but the tune was instantly recognizable—

“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht
Alles schläft; einsam wacht”

Then, from somewhere along the British line, 20 or 30 yards away, English voices began to sing in harmony with the German voices that were now echoing across no-man’s land.

“Silent night, holy night
All is calm; all is bright”

Within minutes hundreds of men, on both sides, were singing loudly into the night sky.

First it was Silent Night, then it was Good King Wenceslas – looking out on the feast of Saint Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp, and even.

The singing that had sprung up in the middle of this most unlikeliest of places, in this most darkest of times, continued into the night.

And before long, men had gone up the ladders, pouring over the tops of the trenches – not to exchange gunfire, but to exchange Christmas greetings, and small gifts… the Protestants exchanged tins of baked beans for chocolate bars, and the Catholics exchanged cartons of cigarettes for bottles of rum.

Candles had been lit along the German lines for as far as Emerson could see in both directions.

Men of different languages, different cultures, different countries… men who had been spilling each other’s blood for months, had found something they had in common, maybe the only thing, and it was more powerful than all of the hatred, and all of the destruction that they had leveled against each other.

Well, they had come to their senses,

if for only one night.

They had remembered their place

as people of the Light.

The killing and the dying,

it had come to an end.

In the frost and the darkness

there were no flags to defend.

There was only candlelight,

and warm greetings for those,

who had been trapped inside pits

as they shivered and froze.

They had emerged from their trenches,

like dead men from their graves…

Laying down their weapons,

and hailing the one Lord who saves.

So much evil had happened,

since they’d taken up arms.

So many had died,

since they’d left their families and farms.

If they could only go back,

if they could only return,

to the days that had passed,

before the world began to burn.

And this war to end wars –

Well it came,

and it went…

And not very much changed,

and few knew what it meant.

Those men who defied orders,

on that cold Christmas Eve…

Who left their positions in order to sing…

Most were all dead,

by the following Spring.

And millions went with them;

The death toll was profound.

But on that one night,

some Christians, created a sound…

And it’s reached us all here,

across a century that’s passed…

In our warmth and our comfort,

Having broken our fast,

It was a powerful song that was sung on that night.

It reached Satan and his demons in the depths of their Hell.

They were no longer laughing;

It had broken their spell.

The soldiers had awoken and remembered the truth;

they shared something sacred with those they called foe…

And nothing could change that,

no war far below.

This connection they shared;

It transcended men’s borders.

It was greater and stronger, than some general’s orders.

The kings they fought for, would one day fall down.

They would bow at the feet of the One with the Crown.

But this lesson remains;

For this story is true.

Most of it, that is…

Some details I made up –

but only a few.

There was a Great Christmas, so long ago…

Foretold from the moment of man’s great fall.

And it’s something to ponder

As we deck the hall.

If we ignore it, or we forget it,

Or we don’t ask, “what does it all mean?”

-we might find ourselves trapped

like the soldiers in 1914.

“I am the Light of the World.”

That’s what Jesus said.

That’s why he was tortured.

That’s why he bled.

So, we take his word,

and his teaching to heart,

each Christmas we gather

and do our best to impart –

that this Savior and His Kingdom

are greater than all others,

and the Day of his birth, is a time for sisters and brothers…

Even though we have quarrels –

Even though we all fight –

We have to forgive, and reflect His love –

and his light.

Jesus taught us to give—and to lay down our lives.

He saved us from sin and from evil desire.

And we need it,

because, each one of us, all,

are like Emerson Dustmire.

The End

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