When Christmas Silenced War

When Christmas Silenced War

By Prospero Pulma Jr.

Movies about Santa, reindeers, elves, and children - naughty and nice - entangled in cheerful plots inflame the yuletide spirit while war films douse the warm fires enkindled by Christmas, making Christmas films that have soldiers for protagonists rare and war movies with peace on Christmas as its theme rarer. Joyeux Noel, Silent Night, and A Midnight Clear are among the handful of films that have Christmas and war playing tug of war. One pulls the protagonists to the path of peace on Christmas and the other calls them to bear arms again.

“Joyeux Noel” dramatizes the Christmas Truce of 1914 when soldiers locked in trench warfare in the European Western Front unofficially declared a ceasefire. Hearing Christmas carols sang in different languages, seeing candlelit Christmas trees enlivening the ramparts of trenches and watching men, who have been trading shots and bayonet thrusts before the ceasefire, swapping gifts, sharing food and wine, playing football, and tipping one another about impending artillery bombardments can elevate a pacifist to nirvana. Then, the ruined houses, fields pockmarked by cannon fire, and the unburied dead will dump the same pacifist into bloody reality. The ethereal ceasefire amidst one of history’s bloodiest battles almost earns “Joyeux Noel” the tag of a fantasy film, an escapist flick even, for people weary of war.

Fritz Vincken shares his own Christmas truce experience in “Silent Night.” Fleeing from the war, young Fritz and his mother had war crashing into their lives when three American and three German soldiers wandered to their Ardennes Forest cottage on Christmas 1944. The combatants grudgingly accepted Elisabeth’s demand that they leave their weapons outside the cabin. It was warm and bright inside, made warmer by the soldiers’ pooling of their rations to augment the Vickens’ potato-based Christmas dinner and brighter by a German treating a wounded American and the construction of a Christmas tree crowned by a dog tag intertwined with a crucifix. Even with everyone trying to live with the Christmas spirit, the winds of war occasionally blew into the cottage, nearly shattering the ceasefire.

“A Midnight Clear” is an adaptation of William Wharton’s semiautobiographical novel. It tells the story of six American soldiers setting up an outpost at a forlorn chateau in the Ardennes in December 1944. Seven German soldiers from the Eastern Front soon start sending the Americans cryptic messages. The GIs eventually learn of the Germans’ wish to survive the war by surrendering to them but not after staging a mock battle to spare their families from Nazi reprisals. Prior to the surrender, the soldiers have a snowball fight and celebrate Christmas on a snowfield. Bottles of wine pass from the Americans to the Germans and sausages from the Germans to the Americans. The soldiers sing carols in German and English before a Christmas tree ornamented by a hand grenade.

The football game and snowball fight between combatants, the dog tag and hand grenade embellishing Christmas trees, and enemies singing Christmas carols together and sharing Christmas meals give viewers an eerie dream of Christmas silencing war. The celebration of brotherhood and peace, pillars of Christmas, by war’s captive participants makes the vision eerier.