Eight Things To Know
Christmas Edition
The Christmas Truce of 1914.
Apollo 8 Christmas Dinner, 1968.
Lincoln’s Last Christmas, 1864.
Finding Christmas During the Battle of the Bulge, 1944.
Putin’s Orthodox Christmas Celebration.
The King’s Christmas Message, 1939.
The First White House Christmas Tree, 1889.
Happy New Year from the Flatiron Building, 1907.
1. The Christmas truce of 1914.
In December 1914, American newspaper reporter Phil Rader was a member of the French Foreign Legion, fighting in the trenches of the Western Front in northern France.
He was one of approximately one hundred Americans who had enlisted in the Legion after it opened its ranks to foreigners in August 1914.
In March of the next year, Rader wrote this personal account of the Christmas Truce of 1914 for UPI.
“We had been in the trenches for twenty days before Christmas dawned. For twenty days we had faced that strip of land, forty-five feet wide, between our trenches and that of the Germans, that terrible No-man’s land, dotted with dead bodies, crisscrossed by tangled masses of barbed wire. That little strip of land was as full of death as the Atlantic Ocean; as uncrossable as the spaces between stars; as terrible as human hate.
“And the sunshine of the bright Christmas morning fell on it as brightly as if it were a lover’s lane or the aisle in some grand cathedral.
“I don’t know how the truce began in other trenches, but in our hole, Nadeem began it — Nadeem, a Turk who believes that Mahomet and not Christ was the prophet of God. He was only an enthusiastic boy, always childishly happy, and when we noticed, at the regular morning shooting hour, that the German trenches were silent, Nadeem began to joke about it.
“He drew a target on a board, fastened it on a pole and stuck it above the trench, shouting to the Germans ‘See how well you can shoot.’
“Within a minute the target had been bulls-eyed. Nadeem pulled it down, pasted little white bits of paper where shots had struck, and held it up again so that the Germans could see their score. In doing so, Nadeem’s head appeared above the trench, and we heard him talking across No-man’s land. Thoughtlessly, I raised my head, too. Other men did the same. We saw hundreds of German heads appearing. Shouts filled the air. What miracle had happened? Men laughed and cheered.
“A ponderous German with a happy smile that exposed rows of glittering white teeth climbed out of the trench and shouted: ‘Lieutenant Schroder presents his compliments to your lieutenant, and desires to know if he will select four men and come to the middle of the neutral territory, to arrange for a truce for burying the dead.’
“Our lieutenant agreed in an instant. The truce was arranged. There was to be no more firing for one hour and the men from both sides were to come and bury their dead. The soldiers flocked from both trenches. They rushed at each other and shook hands.
“‘I want to have your photographs,’ said the German lieutenant to our party. He sent back for his camera and we enemies stood with our arms about each other’s shoulders in horseshoe formation while the lieutenant snapped his camera.
“‘If I don’t have a chance to send you the prints before the war is over,’ he said, ‘I shall see that you get them afterward.’ And he took our addresses.
“At last, the bodies were buried. The hour of truce had passed. But the men did not go back to the trenches. In groups all about that once terrible strip of no-man’s land the Germans and the legionnaires sat talking or playing cards, exchanging tobacco and cigarettes and joking and laughing.
“‘Don’t blame us,’ was the burden of the Germans’ talk. ‘It isn’t our fault that we are fighting. We don’t know what it’s all about. We have wives and children and we’re just the same kind of men that you are. We’re damned fools and so is everybody who is fighting.
“And our talk ran the same.
“It wasn’t until the sun began to go down that the groups broke up.
“After supper we heard a sudden blast of music that thrilled us. A little German band had crept into the German trenches and announced itself with a grand chord.
“Then came the unexpected strains of the ‘Marseillaise.’ The Frenchmen went almost frantic with delight. Then came our turn when the band played ‘It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary.’ George Ullard, our Negro cook, who came from Galveston, got out a mouth organ and almost burst his lungs playing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein.’ The silence in the German trenches was a thousand times more eloquent than the blast of cheers that came when George had finished.
“There was no shooting all night until about 6 in the morning when the sound of rifles was heard far down the trench.
“But Nadeem couldn’t measure human nature unerringly. He had been the first to feel the holiday spirit of Christmas day, but on this day after Christmas, he failed to sense the grimness of war that had fallen over the trenches during the night. Early in the morning he jumped out of the trench and began waving his hands again. John Street, an American, who had been an evangelist in St. Louis, jumped out with him, and began to shout a morning greeting to a German he had made friends with the day before.
“There was a sudden rattle of rifle fire and Street fell dead with a bullet through his head. The sun was shining down again on a world gone mad.”
2. Apollo 8 Christmas Dinner, 1968.
While the technical success of the Apollo 8 lunar orbiting mission put President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon during the 1960s within reach, it is the cultural impact of the mission that we most remember.
It is this NASA mission that gave us “Earthrise,” Astronaut Bill Anders’ stunning photograph of the Earth as it rose above the lunar landscape.
Named one of the most iconic images of the 20th century, Earthrise is credited with accelerating the development of the environmental movement, leading to the first Earth Day in 1970.
And it is this NASA mission that presented an Emmy-winning Christmas Eve television broadcast of the lunar surface as the astronauts read the Creation Story from the Book of Genesis, a unifying moment shared by one billion people in sixty-four nations on Earth.
And the next day — Christmas Day — astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and Bill Anders, Time Magazine’s “Men of the Year” for 1968, squeezed their Christmas dinner from toothpaste tubes wrapped in green and red ribbons.
This was on the menu:
Turkey with Gravy (NASA’s first use of a ‘wet-pack,’ and the same as given to US Army troops then serving in Vietnam)
Stuffing
Cranberry-Applesauce
Grape Drink
Black Coffee (the crew chose no sugar)
Sugar Cookie, gelatin-coated to prevent crumbs from floating in the spacecraft
“It was the best meal of the trip.” — Astronaut Frank Borman
Yum.
3. Lincoln’s Last Christmas, 1864.
From what we can tell, it seems to have been a good one.
— The year had brought more Union victories than defeats, and General Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea had succeeded in cutting the South in two.
Confederate supply lines into Virginia had been severed and the South had been demoralized.
Sherman presented the City of Savannah to the President as a gift.
Savannah, Dec.22, 1864
To his Excellency, President Lincoln,
“I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” — W.T. Sherman, Brig. Gen.
The City of Washington celebrated the fall of Savannah with a 300-gun salute.
The long-sought Union victory was in sight.
“Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift — the capture of Savannah. Please make my grateful acknowledgements to your whole army — officers and men.” — Lincoln’s reply
— A regiment of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry, known as the “bucktails” for the deer tails attached to their hats, provided security for the Lincoln White House.
It was the unit’s second Christmas encamped in canvas tents along the northern perimeter of the White House grounds, at the present-day location of Pennsylvania Avenue.
— Lincoln was fresh off an election victory, and his second term would begin as the war was drawing to a close.
It held great promise.
Lincoln would be able to direct the coming post-war period of reconciliation and reconstruction, while continuing to pursue policies promoting the nation’s westward expansion.
And one day, whether as President or after his second term, Lincoln would see the West for himself.
“I have long desired to see California; the production of her gold mines has been a marvel to me, and her stand for the Union, her generous offerings to the Sanitary Commission, and her loyal representatives have endeared your people to me; and nothing would give me more pleasure than a visit to the Pacific shore...” Lincoln letter to Charles Maltby, March 21, 1865
— First Lady Mary Lincoln, in her twenty-third year of marriage to the President, had recently returned from a Christmas shopping trip to Philadelphia. She would oversee a Christmas Day reception for the members of the Cabinet and their wives.
Christmas decorations in the White House were not the ‘over-the-top’ variety of today, but garlands of evergreens are likely to have decorated White House mantels and chandeliers in the first-floor reception rooms.
It was also a tradition, then, to display a tabletop orange tower, held together with syrup, that was studded with cloves and decorated with cinnamon sticks. Its fruit-and-spice fragrance would fill a room.
The tradition of a decorated indoor Christmas tree, first made popular by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle in 1850, had not yet taken hold in America, but it is known that the Lincolns hung Christmas stockings for their children.
— In 1864, Lincoln’s oldest son, Robert, was a first-year law student at Harvard. He was embroiled in a protracted debate with his parents over his desire to enlist in the Union army, so that he could experience the Civil War before it was over.
The enlistment matter was sure to have come up during the 1864 Christmas holiday.
It was an argument that Robert would win.
Soon after Christmas, Lincoln would write to General Grant, despite his wife’s objection, asking that Robert be permitted to join his personal staff as an aide:
“Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but only a friend. My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to which those who have already served long, are better entitled, and better qualified to hold.
“Could he, without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your Military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means? If no, say so without the least hesitation, because I am as anxious, and as deeply interested, that you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.” — Lincoln, January 19, 1865
Grant agreed; and the appointment would enable Robert to be present at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, a story that Robert shared with his father at breakfast on the last day of Lincoln’s life.
— We are told that a large Christmas dinner was served at the White House in 1864.
While we aren’t sure what Lincoln ate, many upscale American homes might then have served turkey, oysters, venison, glazed fruits, cakes, candies, eggnog and hot coffee.
But the White House cooks may have prepared some of Lincoln’s favorites, instead. His favorite entrée was chicken fricassee, a French dish of browned chicken served in a creamy mushroom and vegetable sauce.
Lincoln also liked corn cakes, made from whole corn, milk, a little sugar and flour; and he was known to like apples, bacon and gingerbread.
Tad Lincoln, the President’s eleven-year-old son, invited several cold and hungry young newsboys in off the streets to join the Lincoln family for Christmas dinner; and the President is said to have welcomed them to the family table.
— And what did Tad get in his Christmas stocking?
No record exists, but Tad’s favorite outing with his father was the four-block walk they took regularly up New York Avenue to the Stuntz Toy and Candy Store.
The store occupied the first floor of a little two-story brick building. Its most popular display was the “penny counter,” where children could buy wrapped candies, such as licorice and taffy, and little toys, like a tin whistle, for one cent.
The proprietor, Joseph Stuntz, was a disabled former soldier in Napoleon’s army. Stuntz made hand-carved and painted wooden soldiers and these were Tad’s favorite toys.
Tad had a large collection of toy soldiers that he used to stage elaborate battle reenactments in front of painted paper facades.
An admission ticket for Tad’s battle reenactments cost a penny. [Some of Tad’s paper tickets survive.]
Lincoln was an indulgent father. You can be sure that, in 1864, Tad got more of Mr. Stuntz’s toy soldiers for his collection.
“I want to give Tad all the toys I didn’t have, and all the toys I would have given to the boy who went away.” — Lincoln
[Eleven-year-old Willie had died of typhoid fever in 1862.]
4. Finding Christmas during the Battle of the Bulge, 1944.
The Ardennes Forest was not on the Allies’ radar.
The seventy-five-mile stretch of heavy Belgian woods wasn’t perceived as having any strategic significance.
So, in late 1944, they sent four inexperienced and battle-worn American divisions there for rest and seasoning.
The mistake in judgment was made clear early on the morning of December 16, 1944, when 200,000 German troops and 1,000 tanks mounted a surprise assault.
Taking advantage of fog, deep snow and record-cold temperatures, the Germans intended to drive through the Ardennes and reach the English Channel, cutting Allied Armies in two and seizing control of the port in Antwerp.
In the opening salvo, the German army broke through the American line by the end of the first day.
Allied soldiers and Belgian civilians were massacred.
English-speaking German soldiers, disguised as Americans, captured critical bridges, cut communications lines, and spread disinformation.
The city of Bastogne was surrounded, entrapping the men of the US 101st Airborne Division.
During Christmas week 1944, the city was the scene of the heaviest fighting.
An Army chaplain led a brief Christmas service for the Americans entrapped there.
Most Americans fighting outside the city had no Christmas celebration at all.
“I was from Buffalo, I thought I knew cold. But I didn’t really know cold until the Battle of the Bulge.” — Warren Spahn
But a few American soldiers got lucky, receiving invitations into the homes of Belgian families.
Here is the story of one of them:
“We were out in the outskirts of Bastogne, we found this farmhouse… Inside was a man and a woman, and a little boy and a little girl…the wife, she gave us some soup and some black bread. We stayed there all night in this farmhouse. The war was going on fiercely outside and for some reason the farmhouse never got hit.
“We were there Christmas Eve. We sang Christmas songs that night with this Belgian family. We sang Jingle Bells and Silent Night. The words were different, but the music was the same….” — Keith Davis
But good news came on Christmas Day. The 2nd US Armored Division stopped the German tank advance, and the next day General Patton’s 3rd Army entered Bastogne.
And throughout January 1945, American troops, with the support of many reinforcements, counter-attacked, succeeding in restoring the Allied front line.
The battle proved to be the costliest in US Army history, with more than 100,000 casualties, but it would be Hitler's last offensive on the Western Front.
"This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory." — Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill
It was on to Berlin.
5. Putin’s Orthodox Christmas Celebration.
For Vladimir Putin, the Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7 is an opportunity to demonstrate fidelity to traditional, conservative values.
Each year on Christmas Eve, he stands alongside the faithful in small, little-known historic churches located far away from Moscow.
A different church is selected each year.
Photographs of Putin’s piety then fill Russian state media and are beamed into the homes of his political base — rural people and those over age fifty-five.
Last year, Putin attended services three hundred miles from Moscow, in the 13th century Saint Nikolai Church on Lipno Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The year before, he stood among worshippers in the Transfiguration Cathedral in St. Petersburg, a church with historic ties to Russia’s military.
Religious devotion, conservatism and regular public remembrances of the Great Patriotic War, the Russian term for World War II, have marked Putin’s presidency.
During his twenty-two years in power, thousands of new Orthodox churches have been constructed and old ones have been restored with government funds.
The decades of official Soviet atheism are long gone.
Two-thirds of Russia’s population currently identifies as Orthodox Christian and Russian schools now offer students the choice of religious instruction in Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Islam or Judaism [the designated ‘traditional’ Russian religions], or instruction in secular ethics.
Putin’s personal religious views are unknown.
In interviews, he has refused to answer the question whether he believes in God; but he has said that leadership decisions must spring from a common sense based on morality; and moral values, in turn, must be grounded in religious beliefs.
Putin’s mother had him baptized secretly at the Transfiguration Cathedral when he was a baby and hid the fact from Putin’s father, an atheist.
In 1993, when Putin visited Israel as a part of a Russian delegation, he wore his gold baptismal cross at his mother’s request, so that it could be blessed at Christ’s Tomb in Jerusalem.
Putin claims that, since receiving the holy blessing, he has never taken off his cross.
And sure enough, he is wearing it in all of his topless photos.
6. The King’s Christmas Message, 1939.
The British tradition of an annual royal Christmas message was begun in 1932, when King George V spoke to twenty million people in a radio address broadcast from the royal residence in Sandringham.
After he died in 1935, the tradition stopped; but with the onset of the second world war in 1939, his son, King George VI, decided that a Christmas message was appropriate.
Overcoming his speech impediment, the King delivered a stirring, patriotic address, which became one of the most famous royal speeches in British history.
The speech is reprinted here, in part:
“The festival which we all know as Christmas is, above all, the festival of peace and of the home. Among all free peoples the love of peace is profound, for this alone gives security to the home.
“But true peace is in the hearts of men, and it is the tragedy of this time that there are powerful countries whose whole direction and policy are based on aggression and the suppression of all that we hold dear for mankind.
“It is this that has stirred our peoples and given them a unity unknown in any previous way. We feel in our hearts that we are fighting against wickedness, and this conviction will give us strength from day to day to persevere until victory is assured.
“At home we are, as it were, taking the strain for what may lie ahead of us, resolved and confident…
“And to all who are preparing themselves to serve their country on sea, on land, or in the air, I send my greeting at this time.
“A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace how thankful we shall all be. If it brings continued struggle, we shall remain undaunted.
“May that Almighty hand [of God] guide and uphold us all.”
Queen Elizabeth has continued to broadcast an annual Christmas message every year, beginning in 1952, following the death of her father.
This year, at three o’clock on Christmas Day, she will deliver her sixty-ninth Christmas address to the nation.
More than eight million people are expected to watch the Queen’s Christmas message on British television, with millions more watching it on the royal YouTube channel and Facebook page.
7. The First White House Christmas Tree, 1889.
President Benjamin “Little Ben” Harrison could fairly lay claim to being the best presidential grandpa in American history.
After his inauguration in 1889, he invited his adult son and daughter and their families to live in the White House, and he quit work at noon on most days so that he could play with his three young grandchildren.
The Harrison White House was filled with pets: a fawn; a goat named “His Whiskers” who gave the children rides in a pull-cart; a very large bloodhound; a collie; several parakeets; and, for a while, a small alligator.
And Grandpa Ben was the first American president to bring a Christmas tree into the White House.
“I am an ardent believer in the duty we owe ourselves at Christmas to make merry for the children at Christmas time, and we shall have an old-fashioned Christmas tree for the grandchildren upstairs; and I shall be their Santa Claus myself.
“If my influence goes for aught in this busy world, let me hope that my example may be followed in every family in the land.’ — President Harrison, 1889
The Harrison Christmas tree, trimmed with flags, toys and ornaments, was said to be ‘the most beautiful and perfect tree that could be found in all the country,’ and occupied center stage in the second-floor library.
The White House gardener decorated the library with holly, ferns and mistletoe and hundreds of gifts from presidential friends and admirers filled the room.
On Christmas morning, Mrs. Harrison summoned members of the White House domestic staff to receive a gift from the First Family. Married men were given turkeys and single men were given a pair of gloves.
8. Happy New Year from the Flatiron Building, 1907.
Thanks for reading! We’re taking a short break. We’ll see you on January 7.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.