Late last night I heard a Christmas song that I had never heard before, and I knew I had to post it today. It is a song written about something that really happened in 1915 during World War I. As with all great songs about legendary historic events, the writer took a few liberties with the truth, but the core of the story does seem to be true. The British and the German troops were entrenched close to each other when Christmas came. The British heard the Germans singing a song they recognized as "Silent Night" in German. They responded by singing their own carol. After some back and forth, both sides emerged from their fox holes and had a small celebration together in the area deemed "no man's land", which also included playing a little football. The event didn't last long as commanders called their troops back to the reality of the situation.
Much like the officers of these men, the writers of this song decide to call us all back to the reality of war in the last verse. I had no idea there was a Christmas song about killing Germans mixed with words from "Silent Night". It was like that scene in every John Woo movie where there is a gun battle with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" playing over the action. The song had started by warming my heart and then slammed me back to the cold harsh war. Why don't you just tell me the Christmas Shoes woman died!
I hope you find you find this as oddly interesting as I did.
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The song is sung by the group Cletic Thunder who had a Christmas special on PBS last night.
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