Christmas truce

The Christmas truce was a series of informal ceasefires along the Western Front during the first Christmas of the First World War. Soldiers on both sides, mostly British and German, sang carols, called greetings across the trenches, and in places met in no man's land to exchange small gifts and bury their dead. There are accounts of impromptu football games, though how widespread these were is debated. The truce was not universal, and in many sectors the fighting continued. Senior commanders on both sides disapproved and took steps to stop it from happening again, and nothing of the same scale occurred in later years. The episode became a lasting symbol of shared humanity in a brutal war.

Open on the timeline