Silent Night — 200 Years Old and Still Going Strong
For the last 200 years, the Christmas song “Silent Night” has been enhancing the Christmas experiences for religious people all over the word. It even helped bring about a temporary peace in WWI. On Christmas Eve in 1914, the troops in the trenches of both the Allied Powers and Central Powers began singing Christmas carols. With the trenches of the opposing sides frequently being close enough that the troops on either side could hear each other, first one side would sing a carol, and then the other side would, singing carols that both sides often recognized, including “Silent Night, Holy Night,” or in German “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.” In one area of the front, the singing of that specific song was what brought the cultures together, reminding them that behind the guns the soldiers were all the same. Canada’s CBC News reported:
“It was impromptu, no one planned it,” Stanley Weintraub, the author of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, told Daybreak South’s Chris Walker.
“It has to begin with something, and it did begin with elements of shared culture. If it hadn’t been for shared culture, certainly there would have been no Christmas truce.”
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