Two Tales for Christmas Eve

From my Mother:
 
“When George was in Europe during World War II, a German woman approached him and asked him for help to get her husband, also a meteorologist, in the German army, released. I guess he was a prisoner-of-war. He went to her house, where she lived with her young son. She begged him to help.” “How did he meet her?” I asked. “He didn’t say,” she said. “She gave him an 

angel Hummel figure with a broken wing. Her son cried when she gave it to him. Of course, there was nothing he could do to help.” “How old was her son?” I asked. “I imagine about four or five,” she said. “I wonder what happened to her,” I said. “He never saw her again,” she said. “I wonder if her husband came home,” I said. “I wonder, too,” she said. We sat in silence for a moment, lost in our wondering. “Wow,” I said, “that one just hangs there.” “It really does,” she said.

 
A story from Storycatcher, by Christina Baldwin (page xiii):

On Christmas Eve in 1914, two lines of homesick soldiers, one British, one German, were dug into trenches on the Western Front in the midst of World War I. Between them was a fire zone called no-man’s land. On this moonlit, snowy night, the Germans lifted army issued Christmas trees twinkling with tiny candles over the edge of their trenches and set them in plain site. The British shouted and cheered in delight. The Germans began singing “Stille Nacht…” and the British began to sing along with “Silent Night.” This encouraged the Germans and they set down their guns in themoonlight and heaved themselves from their trenches carrying candles, cake, and cigars toward their enemies. The British responded in kind carrying steamed pudding and cigarettes. The men met in the middle of the forbidden zone, exchanged gifts, sang carols, and played soccer. This seemingly spontaneous truce extended for hundreds of kilometers among thousands of soldiers. They couldn’t shoot each other. The war essentially stopped. Horrified commanders on both sides had to transfer thousands of men to new positions until the enemy became faceless and storyless again, something killable, not a brother. Almost a hundred years later, scholars are still studying this event, reading soldier’s journals and letters that refer to it, seeking to understand “the breakdown in military mindset,” or seeking to understand how a spontaneous peace movement could spread within the heart of war.

Blessings of peace to you and those you love on this Night of Nights.