Michael Fitzpatrick is a parishioner at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, CA. After growing up in the rural northwest, he served over five years in the U. S. Army as a Chaplain's Assistant, including two deployments to Iraq. After completing his military service, Michael has done graduate work in literature and philosophy. He is now finishing his PhD at Stanford University.

January 3rd, 2021 is the tenth day of Christmastide, the “twelve days of Christmas” so famously full of gold rings, various fowl, and a solitary pear tree. In my household we adore Christmas movies, and a common ritual during Christmastide is to watch Christmas movies each day until Epiphany. One of my absolute favorites is the film Joyeux Noël, French for "merry Christmas." Its fictional characters capture true events on a fateful Christmas Eve in the first year of World War I. The film has also become a touchstone for my own reflections on my experiences as a war veteran, having served two tours of duty in Iraq.

On December 24th, 1914, German soldiers manning the front line trenches were sent hundreds of Christmas trees to line their otherwise morbid trenches as the armies involved in the first world war endured their first wartime Christmas. After making due with their meager decorations, the Germans began singing Christmas carols in their trenches, echoing out over the quiet battlefield. The nations at war were halted in their campaigns, freeing the nighttime air from the shattering reverberations of artillery explosions and rifle bursts.

Scene from the 2005 French film "Joyeux Noël" based on the true events of Christmas Eve, 1914 when WWI soldiers from opposing armies celebrated Christmas together.

Soon, British, German, and French soldiers across the battlefield began singing in response. The Christmas Eve celebration was not limited to a few isolated pockets of soldiers; thousands of soldiers across kilometers of trenches found themselves naturally pursuing a truce with the enemy soldiers. While heads of state and their decorated generals plotted invasions and sabotage, the foot soldiers and their junior officers opted for a cease fire in honor of Christmas.

In the movie, each of the regiments depicted are saturated with propaganda about the inhumanity of their enemies. Each side imagines the other as barbarians, and many believe that God will grant victory to their side in the conflict. The film brilliantly and patiently unfolds their discovery of a common humanity as they brave the distance across “no man’s land,” the barren wasteland separating their respective front lines. Wallet photos of spouses and children appear, exchanges of fine wine or whiskey are made, a pick-up game of football is scrimmaged, and perhaps most arresting, they gather together to say the Latin mass with one voice. Soldiers look to their left and right, and while the uniforms say they are enemies, the rite of the Christmas Eve service reveals common pilgrims seeking the Prince of Peace.

Having been told to hate one another, they discovered that, in another life, most of the people they were fighting they should like to be friends with. They lament the absurdity of trying to kill people they have no desire to kill, simply because far off commanders with alien ambitions demand that they do so. In an astonishing moral action, after Christmas Day the German commander warns the opposing trenches of incoming shelling, and encourages them to take refuge in the German trenches. When the shelling ends, the Scots and the French repay the favor by harboring the German soldiers from the retaliation artillery.

How were these bold actions met by the senior military leadership? The soldiers on all sides were soundly and publicly punished and condemned for fraternization with the enemy. The high commands took no interest in understanding how these soldiers drew near to their brothers across the lines because of Christmas, or what that might imply for the possibilities of peace. Nationalistic loyalty is seen even creeping into the church. One of the main characters is the priest who presides over the impromptu mass. When he returns to the rear, he is met by his bishop, who denounces him on the spot and strips him of his parish. The bishop is appalled at the “cowardly” act. In response, the priest confesses with a tone of awe, “I think I offered what was the most important mass of my life.” I quite agree.

The author standing beside an Iraqi local police commander focused on restoring native security to his community.

As a combat veteran, these kinds of war stories help me to process and understand my own experiences. I deployed twice to Iraq as a soldier in the 1st Cavalry Division, a time of more than two years. The Iraqi people were beautiful in my experience; I had no quarrel with them. Early on in my first deployment to Iraq, I met a well-educated Iraqi electrician who taught me Arabic in exchange for English conversations. We would talk religion, discuss our families, and as he shared with me what it was like to live in a country constantly in turmoil from war and economic hardship, my sympathies lay far more with him than the American war machine I was a part of.

In Joyeux Noël, after the bishop finishes denouncing his priest, he goes into a makeshift chapel and delivers a homily intended to buck up new recruits before they head to the front line. During his homily, he confidently instructs them, “This war is indeed a crusade! A holy war to save the freedom of the world. In truth I tell you: the Germans do not act like us, neither do they think like us, for they are not, like us, children of God.” He commands the soldiers to kill, because it’s okay to kill people who are evil, who are not, “like us,” people chosen by God. "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country," Wilfred Owen's titular WWI poem scathingly mocks (you can read the full poem here on JWJ). Nations often justify their imperial ambitions as the will of God, and woe to the religious leader complicit with their ambition. Those soldiers who on Christmas Eve crossed battle lines to celebrate Christmas as if there was no war came far closer to seeing the will of God.

When people ask me for my thoughts on war as a combat veteran, I often point them to Joyeux Noël as encapsulating my sentiments. In the light of Christmas, war is contrary to everything God is bringing forth in the Kingdom of heaven. Where war brings destruction, God brings reconciliation. President Eisenhower said it best when he remarked, after his presidency, “I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.” War takes us further from the flourishing of people, it makes it harder to live into the “life and life to the full” Jesus offers to every person on this earth (John 10.10). At the end of World War II, Eisenhower confessed as he surveyed the smoldering ruins of Europe, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.” On Christmas Eve, 1914, the German, French, and British soldiers lived as humans in gratitude before the Christ-child. The next day, they were told to shoot one another. That is the absurd. And when they refused, they were persecuted and condemned for their righteous stance.

A mural depicting peace between India and Pakistan painted by local youth on the border between the two nations.

Perhaps you think these reflections do not apply to you, if you are a reader who has not been to war. Many of us live in nations that are at peace, at least internally. Unlike my Iraqi friends, we do not live in fear of invasion or internal instability causing our way of life to collapse. But war comes in many forms, and nearly all of us live in nations where political parties and leaders battle with each other and deploy rhetoric designed to turn neighbors against each other. These are wars in just another form, using words rather than bullets to cause casualties.

The “peace of God which surpasses all understanding” that we celebrate each year at Christmas is not for Christmas alone (Phil. 4.7). The soldiers depicted in Joyeux Noël were right to want to live into that Christmas spirit the next day, and the next, and each day henceforth. Christmas is not a day or even a season, but a portrait of hope that God intends for every woman, man, and child. That Christ has come to earth means that the wars we fight, whether wars of bullets or wars of votes, are not and cannot be the last word on our lives. Perhaps what we all need is to lay down our figurative arms, and gather with our enemies before the Christ, to remember that God sent his Son for the sake of every person, even those on the other side of the battle lines.

Michael Fitzpatrick welcomes comments and questions via m.c.fitzpatrick@outlook.com

Image credits: (1) The Movie Database; (2) Michael Fitzpatrick; and (3) DAWN.com.