This year we are commemorating a hundred years of the outbreak of the First World War, and we are at the brink of the centenary of the Christmas Truce. As they said, all gave some, but some gave all, and there have been many commemorations this year marking the hundredth anniversary of the First World War, which is the watershed between the greatest century of missions and the worst century of persecution. And all over the world it's time to reflect on what our great-grandparents went through and suffered just a hundred years ago. The moths have the principle that going down the sun in the morning we will remember them, and Cape Town has the noon-day gun to remind us at 12 noon to remember those who fell in the wars. But 100 years ago a most extraordinary Christmas was experienced. On Christmas Eve 1914 a spontaneous ceasefire was observed across the whole of the Western Front. And the Christmas Truce to the First World War is a single event, virtually unprecedented, certainly in its scope, in the history of warfare. It initially received widespread media coverage in the New York Times of 31st of December 1914, And this was followed up by the British newspapers like the Mirror, the Illustrated, London News, the Times, which in January 1915 printed front-page photographs of British and German troops mingling and singing Christmas carols in no man's land. Absolutely extraordinary. Now, this is before the censorship bureaus got really cracking, but because of letters that had gone home, and cards and extraordinary reports from the soldiers at the front. You had Illustrated London News and others showing pictures like this. The French government were the first to see the incredible danger of this to their war efforts and to severely censor any reports of what they called fraternization with the enemy. I took this picture At the Imperial War Museum, hate propaganda against the wicked Hun began as soon as Britain went to war. The press was full of tales of German atrocities, both real and imagined. In this poisonous atmosphere, angry crowds smashed windows of shops owned by German-British authorities and turned German men in camps. It was, according to a poem by Rudyard Kipling, the most popular British right at the time when the British began to hate. And they said, reports of German atrocities were often lurid and false. They included stories of mutilated nuns and butchered babies. But people were all too ready to believe them. In Britain there was a cleansing of everything German or German-sounding. London's Coburg Hotel was renamed the Connacht. German shepherd dogs had to become Alsatians. Many even got stoned to death. German measles became Belgian flush. Orchestras stopped playing Beethoven and Wagner. Absolute hysteria. And so political pressure was brought to bear to censor all reports of the event from the mainstream history books for decades. For years this extraordinary event was known only by word of mouth from some participants. And I remember hearing at moth meetings, I remember meeting people who fought in the First World War. Of course, the last ones have died out by now, but when I was younger I spoke of people who fought on the Western Front in the First World War. Some of them told me about this, and I remember at the time thinking, that's strange, but I didn't really appreciate the depth of it, because I was too young to really appreciate the implications. But the damage caused by the Christmas Truce to propaganda campaigns to demonize the enemy was regarded as a serious threat to the war effort. It's taken decades to unearth the details of this fascinating event that surrounded Christmas 1914. Now, in the centenary year, you're getting publications come out with the Christmas miracle, the true story of the 1914 truce, and books have come out on the Christmas truce, an absolutely extraordinary amount. To understand the background, note that in the first five months of the Great War, over a million Europeans had already been killed in action. In five months. And all the politicians on all sides had promised the soldiers, you will be back home by Christmas. So, now they in mud and blood at the front facing terrible elements of the cold and snow and frostbite and trench foot and lice and they now are feeling more camaraderie with the men on the other side they're fighting because they know they're going through the same hell that we are but these low-life politicians back home have sent us here you know that's something else and they're feeling so alienated from the folks back home and they're feeling more affinity for the people they're fighting Now most of those who'd been killed in the Great War were killed by artillery, over 67%. The initially fast-moving campaigns had degenerated into static trench warfare with a continuous front line of barbed-wine trenches running from the North Sea on the Belgian coast all the way through to the Swiss frontier. You may be surprised to know that one of our South African heroines, Emily Hobhouse, was the most prominent campaigner against British involvement in the First World War. It was that famous Englishwoman Emily Hobhouse who exposed to the world the horrors of Lord Kitchener's scorched earth campaigns against the Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal and the concentration camps. and it was sketches that she either did or commissioned and photographs that she took that documented the burning of the farmhouses. Over 30,000 British, 30,000 Boer farms were destroyed and that means not only the farm dynamited, like look at this cold bloodedness, Before, during the explosion, afterwards, smoking ruins. They dynamited wells, they slaughtered the cattle and sheep, they destroyed the crops. That's Louis Bort's farmhouse going up. They demolished and burned down churches like at Lindley, and imprisoned the Boer women and children into concentration camps like these, in areas that they called them refugee camps. But notice the prisoners of war. If you cross the inner line, the sentries have strict orders to shoot any prisoners passing by. So in Britain they called them refugees, but on the ground they knew that they were actually prisoners. 250 per thousand were dying every year. This means that in four years all the Boer women and children would have been dead. A quarter were dying every year. These are pictures taken by Emily Harpass to show to the world the horrors of concentration camps. And this brave British woman who came from a very privileged background, she had a relative who was a Member of Parliament, her father was a Church of England minister, but here you can see some of her artwork of the Lindley Church, of homes, cemeteries, concentration camps, burning out of farms, the women and children eking out a sparse existence on inadequate provisions in the wilderness without even a tree for shelter, literally put out in the wilderness. If you drive across the Karoo and you see places like Polesburg where they put the people, it's shocking. And this was a disgrace. Now, Emily Hobhouse, known as that Englishwoman, authored the open Christmas letter calling for peace. She got 101 very prominent British women to sign this open Christmas letter which was endorsed by 155 prominent German and Austrian women in response. You can see first name Emily Hobhouse. She is the draft of it. May Christmas hasten that day. Peace on earth is gone, but by renewal of our faith that is still reigns at the heart of things. Christmas should strengthen both you and us and all womanhood to strive for the return of peace. We are yours in a sisterhood of sorrow." And the brave letter, you can imagine she would have been considered something like a traitor at the time for having written it, Under the heading, On Earth Peace, Goodwill Towards Men, Emily Hobhouse wrote, Sisters, the Christmas message sounds like mockery to a world at war. But those of us who wished and still wish for peace may surely offer a solemn greeting to such of you as feel as we do. And so She mentioned that as in the South African War during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902, the brunt of modern war falls upon non-combatants, and the conscience of the world cannot bear the sight. And so, here are the names of these very prominent individuals who courageously put their names to the speaking out against the involvement of civilized nations, Christian nations, fighting their brothers and sisters. Is it not our mission to preserve life? Do not humanity and common sense alike prompt us to join hands with the women and urge our rulers to stave off further bloodshed? May Christmas hasten the day." And what they were trying to say is, look, this war should never have been entered into, but now that it is, let us stop on Christmas. We're going nowhere. In fact, the world would have been a better place if they had stopped on Christmas, because nothing was achieved after 1914 anyway. The German mothers responded with a letter of their own saying, to our English sisters, sisters of the same race, our warm and heartfelt thanks for Christmas greetings. Women of the belligerent countries with all faithfulness, devotion and love to the country can go beyond it and maintain true solidarity with the women of other belligerent nations that really civilized women never lose their humanity. And of course they're speaking as Christians. Because they had a, even if they weren't all born again, they had a basic Christian ethos and worldview. Emily Hobhouse also oversaw the raising of funds and the shipping of foods and medicines to the women and children of Germany and Austria who were starving because of the British naval blockade. And you can see here how these are the dark blue are the minefields. The British Institute, the first such, in the history of the world, total blockade, not just in weapons, but of food going into a nation. And Germany, of course, their only opening to the open sea and to the colonies was through this. So closing off these areas, these are the minefields. And in between the minefields, the warships rampaged and made sure that no food reached them. And the result was this. And this picture I took again in the Imperial War Museum in London. children starving in Vienna, Austria. And it was such children that Emily Hobhouse sought to raise supplies to go through neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland to reach some of those who were the victims of her own nation's blockade. Numerous ministers picked up this theme from Emily Hobhouse and the mothers. And they started proclaiming from the pulpits, may the guns fall silent at least upon the night when the angels sang. And although these messages were officially rebuffed and suppressed in a heavily censored media, many of the soldiers in the front lines seemed to share these sentiments. Whether they knew what Emily Hophouse had said or not, or whether that's spread by the Bush telegraph, people plainly picked up the message of what Kitchener called that bloody woman. From the first week of December, informal truces were being observed by soldiers on the front line. In a letter dated 7 December 1914, Charles de Gaulle, who later would become the famous President of France, expressed his dismay at fraternisation of the enemy, where French and German troops exchanged newspapers and recovered their dead, organising burial parties in no man's land. He was shocked and thought this was a terrible thing. French General de Herbal expressed alarm over soldiers staying too long in the same sector because they became friendly with the enemies. Some battle lines were 70 metres, 100 metres apart and they would carry on conversations between the trenches sometimes. And some even visited one another's trenches. And so at the beginning the men followed the call to arms If you just think of Harry Patch, the last survivor of the First World War who fought in the trenches, he died at age 111 I think. Now he was born 1898 and Sir Harry Patch is the last surviving British Tommy who fought in the trenches. He said that he had always been against war. He had told the other men that we must make a pact we never will kill another human being and they will always aim to miss and aim high and he said a number of occasions when people tried to associate with him like Tony Blair and Prime Minister Brown, he rebuffed him and said, you bloody politicians should take up the rifles and go and sort out your problems with one another. Don't send other people's youngsters to go and fight your useless wars. And he said, this is ridiculous. Here we had civilized people, Christian people fighting one another. And so he was totally against it. And he said, you know, don't use me for your propaganda. I never killed anyone. I deliberately made sure I never killed anyone." So he said, I never thought you wise. I was a Conchie. You would have put me against the wall and had me shot, as they did to many others for being conscientious objectors. There were thousands who were shot for refusing to fire on the enemy, just as he did. But he said he managed to survive the war, and so he regarded the real enemy as his own politicians had sent him there. And there's extraordinary sympathy between one another. After heavy rains near Ypres, where the Germans held the high ground, the British held the low grounds, the English troops came out their flooded trenches in full view of the Germans who expressed their sympathy and didn't open fire on their soaked and vulnerable enemies. This is early December still. This isn't Christmas yet. Then on the 11th of December, the 2nd Essex Regiment recorded in their war diary that the officers and men met the German-Saxon corps halfway between the trenches, exchanging food, cigarettes, chocolates and conversations. This is 11 December. the people of all the combatant nations had this terrible sense of horror that the war was not stopping for Christmas and that everyone was meant to be home by Christmas and the short sharp war had not materialized, it had become static and stuck the death tolls were horrific and so all the nations started to urge the people to send gifts and cards to the men in the trenches and so the soldiers were actually deluged with wine and cigarettes and here and with all kinds of gloves and bullies and chocolates and you name it. Well what started it? Just bring us back a little bit. Oh that's another presentation let's stick let's stick to well I mean we've dealt with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by communist terrorists of the Serbian Black Hand and all of that I mean basically the war started because of assassins who had assassinated many heads of state. The Austrian Archduke was just the last in a long line. Even the Empress of Austria, the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been murdered by one of these Marxist terrorists. Queen Victoria's granddaughter had a wedding procession in Spain bombed by the anarchists. There was assassination attempts on even up to the Emperor of Austria, failed attempts. the grandfather of Tsar Nicholas had been assassinated by the same communists. So there were communist revolutionaries fighting assassinations and the Serbian terrorists had started the war with this assassination. So plainly, I mean that's where it all started. But the soldiers at the front were now being deluged not only with gifts, but cards. I mean this is from King George. Every soldier was to get one of these cards in the front With our best wishes for Christmas 1914, may God protect you and bring you home safe. There's one of hundreds of thousands of such cards printed and distributed to British soldiers at the end of the First World War. But at the end of the first five months of the First World War, the British Army had suffered 85% casualties in the first five months. By December 1914, 85% of the British Army was wiped out. they'd lost their entire regular army, and now they had to train up the new army of new volunteers. On Christmas Eve, German soldiers began decorating the trenches with Christmas trees and candles. In fact, one of the more strange things was that the Kaiser ordered that they provide Christmas trees for every trench, so basically they had a Christmas tree every two meters, which was phenomenal logistics, and it drove the supply people to distraction that they had to supply so many wagons just to carry the gifts that came from Frankfurt alone to the soldiers in the front. Parcels from the families required multiplied trains with hundreds of wagons to be able to transport just the packages. So the logistics to get hot food to the men in the trenches, to get some Christmas cake to them, to get the parcels and This ran everyone into overdrive to be able to see that the men in the front could at least have some kind of Christmas celebration. And so it is recorded that the Christmas truce began in the region of Ypres and I've been at that very spot where they've got a cross marking the spot where The Germans began enthusiastically singing Christmas carols in their trenches, and the British soldiers joined in singing Silent Night, because they recognised the tune, so you had them literally sing Silent Night in German and English, and then there was this kind of carol competition, as they sang different carols, and then each side started shouting Christmas greetings to one another. And here's one soldier's letter. They finished their carol, and we thought we ought to retaliate in some way, so we sang the first Noel. When we finished that, all began clapping, and then they struck up another favourite of theirs, O Tauernbaum, O Christmas Tree. And so it went on. First the Germans would sing one of their carols, then we'd sing one of ours, until when we stood up, O come all ye faithful, the Germans immediately joined in, singing the same hymn to their Latin words. And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing. Two nations both sing the same carol in the middle of a war. Shortly after that, soldiers spontaneously came out of their trenches and walked across no-man's land to greet one another, exchanging gifts and souvenirs. And this truce spread rapidly across the entire Western Front. Officially, over 100,000 German and British troops were involved in this unofficial cessation of fighting. And soon Australian troops, New Zealand troops, Canadian, Belgian, French troops joined in the Christmas celebrations in the frozen strip of no man's land. And it was an extraordinary thing. Joint worship services were held at numerous of the locations. And respectful burial services were conducted by the combatants for the dead between the lines. And you can still see some of the markers of where people were killed down there. 10th of November 1914. Soldiers swapped their ration packs and wine and pies and chocolates and souvenirs and buttons and badges and hats. In fact there's one intriguing story, because these stories are now coming out at the Imperial War Museum, they've got quite a few out there, and one of the more amusing ones is this German soldier gave his spiked hat, which of course was quite a treasured item for the British as a souvenir, in exchange with one the British soldier gave his cap. And later on they had an inspection coming, a parade, and he needed his spiked helmet again, so he sent a note back crossing, could you send along just for this one day and I'll get back to you. And such was the trust that they went across, swapped, he had his helmet there and he sent it back. And the soldier got his his spiked helmet back, amazing things. And these are some of the cards that people sent, a friendly check for the enemy. This is contemporary, and these are now on display at the Imperial War Museum. Pictorial proof of the Christmas Day truth showing Britain and German friends between the trenches in Belgium. Phenomenal as it may appear that soldiers can fight to the death one day and fraternize the next, it is after all only strictly in accordance with human nature. I don't think so. I think this journalist is missing the point. This didn't happen on the Queen's birthday. This didn't happen on the 4th of July. This didn't happen on Id. This happened on Christmas Day. And that's the difference. And by the way, what is utterly confusing to many people, when you look at some of these pictures, you can be absolutely confused, because of the bewildering mixture of uniforms. It's because they've swapped helmets and hats, and they've swapped jackets, and so you've got British soldiers wearing German hats, you've got German soldiers wearing British hats, and if you recognize the uniforms, you'll immediately get quite confused, because there was such an enormous amount of swapping everything. It's like when When my son goes on karate tours, he swaps his South African colours for someone else's. He's now wearing a Swiss outfit. And when Calvin goes on scout things, they swap their scout badges and their scout scarves. And next thing you know, everyone's wearing someone else's. Non-commissioned officers were souvenirs of the Christmas Day Truce of 1914. And there you can see, there's the very famous spiked helmets that were so popular for the British to come home with. The next day, Christmas Day, football matches were played between the lines. British officer Robert Grayes wrote of the football match between the 133rd Saxon Regiment and his Scottish troops. And this happened on multiple occasions. There are newspapers that reported the scores all the way through to Glasgow. For example, the Germans won 3-2 in that match. The Glasgow News on the 2nd of January reported the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders won their match 4-1. And the Royal Field Artillery Lieutenant Albert Bain wrote of their soccer match against the Hanoverians near Ypres on Christmas Day. Now numerous commanders threatened repercussions for lack of discipline and I mean this was actually treason by a military discipline lord. You're not meant to fraternize with the enemy under point of death but you can't shoot a hundred thousand men in one go. Numerous officers ordered their artillery to open fire on the fraternizing troops in no man's land. But the artillery officers realized that that would mean killing their own men too. And so on none of these occasions did the artillery obey the orders. They realized, you're wanting me to kill our troops as well? And so, no, we can't do this on Christmas Day. And you can imagine some of these officers going through the roof. There are numerous complaints on record of officers shocked at the total breakdown of discipline as men point blank refused orders to open fire on their own soldiers. And they were mingling with the enemy in no man's land on Christmas Day. And so the truce is the day that stopped the war. Extraordinary thing. What else could have stopped? a world war, other than the birth of Christ. General Sir Horace Smith Dorrian commanded the British Second Corps. Now there were two British Corps making up the British Army in Belgium and France and Smith Dorrian was in charge of half of the British Army there, the Second Corps. And Smith Dorrian was one of the very few British survivors of the Battle of Isolwana. 35 years earlier, in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, 6,600 British troops were annihilated that day, 22nd of January, 1879, but Smith Dorian was one of the few survivors whose eyewitness accounts make up a huge amount of what we know about what happened that terrible day. Well, General Sir Horace Smith Dorian issued strict orders forbidding fraternization with the enemy in the build-up to Christmas because he knew the dangers, because there had already been these outbreaks, and he complained that his orders were disregarded by the soldiers. He was horrified. And here you can see two encounters, friendly and otherwise. Incidents in the French fighting line. Here you've got the French and Germans meeting one another, saluting and doing joint burial parties. Here's another newspaper cutting. Foes in trenches swap pies for wine. British and Germans exchange gifts during Christmas truce on the firing line. Past season's compliments. English and Saxon officers photographed together between the hostile trenches. This report, 30th of December. And here's the daily graphic, British and Germans, the truce of Christmas. And initially this is considered, now isn't this great and grand, but the politicians were furious and so they cracked down on all these newspapers and this was so expunged from the history books that most people weren't even aware of this for decades. Richard Sherman was so impressed by the camaraderie experienced between his German regiment and the French soldiers during the Christmas truce and even exchanging addresses with one another, he went on to found the Youth Hostel Association 1919 to provide meeting places where young men of all countries could get to know one another. And you read stories of people saying, you know, I remember this place in, you know, this town they found, you had the same hairdresser and there were cases of a German hairdresser cutting a Frenchman's hair in no man's land during Christmas Day and a British hairdresser cutting a German's hair What also astounded me as I investigated this is there was a general observance of the Christmas Truce in the Eastern Front. Now we normally think of the Eastern Front being very, very vicious, but the Eastern Front, unlike the Western Front where it was spontaneous, the Eastern Front was official. The Russian High Command ordered their men no hostile acts. over Christmas. If you are fired on, you fire back, but you don't initiate any hostilities. The Austrian-German High Commands on the Eastern Front also issued the same orders. The only people who didn't observe it were the Serbs. The Serbs continued fighting through Christmas Day, and so the Austrians on the Serb Front did fight there. But on the whole of the Eastern Front, there was a general ceasefire for more than two weeks. Just remember the Western Christmas is 24th to 25th of December. But the Eastern Christmas is the 6th into the 7th of January. Eastern Orthodox. And the German-Austrian respected the Russian Christmas, and the Russians respected the Western Christmas. And so for two weeks there was complete ceasefire on the Eastern Front. On few occasions did they come out of the trenches and meet one another, unlike the Western Front. But they had a more official ceasefire on the Eastern Front. German, Austrian, Russian commanders ordered ceasefires for the duration of Christmas and in some cases enemy troops came and actually danced together in the Russian Cossack fashion. Extraordinary. There were attempts to crush the Christian spirit of the soldiers. Numerous French and British officers were court-martialed for participating in fraternization with the enemy. Officially 500 Frenchmen were sentenced to death. Hold units had to be pulled from the front, sent to other fronts when they displayed reluctance to open fire on the enemy that they had just celebrated Christmas with. Numerous artillery units began to fire only at precise locations at pre-range times to avoid casualties, informing by notes first, we have to open fire at this time, but we'll concentrate in this spot here. And there were even cases of coming across warning, they're about to bombard your trenches, you'd better come and rest in ours, and vice versa. That actually happened on some fronts. There were so many incidents reported of soldiers firing high and ineffectually. On Easter Sunday, In 1915 there was an attempted truce by German units, but that was suppressed by British artillery fire. But what I've discovered since is there was a successful Easter truce along the Eastern Front. The Russians, Austrians and Germans observed a truce for Easter, which went again from the Western to the Eastern calendar, which took it over two weeks, because there's a difference in how the Eastern observe Easter and the way we do. So the Easter truce was a bigger truce on the Eastern Front. In November 1915 a Saxon unit briefly fraternised with the Liverpool Battalion and conducted burial services together. In December 1915 there were explicit orders directed by Allied commanders and elaborate procedures made to forestall any repeat of the previous Christmas truce and they ordered on Christmas Day multiple artillery barrages along the entire front line throughout Christmas Day to prevent a recurrence of 1914. But that didn't stop a number of truces being observed on the Western Front even December 1915. On some sections of the Western Front carrels and gifts were exchanged between German and British troops and at least one football match with about 50 soldiers on each side was recorded in 1915. And so the football has become very symbolic of the rivalry and the camaraderie between the nations. Sir Ian Cullohan of the Scots Guards was court-martialed in 1915 for defying orders by maintaining a short truce just to bury the dead between their lines on Christmas Day. Fortunately he is related to the British Prime Minister HH Ashworth and so his punishment was commuted. He was not sentenced to death which he could have been under the law of fraternising with the enemy. The German attempts to observe Christmas truces in December 1916-1917 were rebuffed by British artillery barrages who opened up when some of them came out of their lines unarmed, hands raised in order to try and initiate another truce and that was snuffed out. But very recently, evidence has come to light of a successful Christmas truce in 1916 between the German and Canadian troops on Vimy Ridge, where they exchanged Christmas greetings and presents, and the Canadians and Germans even visited one another's trenches on 25 December 1916. And this is something that most people have never heard of. And here's one of the Canadian veterans writing about this Christmas Day 1916 and he's speaking about all of this that took place even on Christmas Day 1916 and what's happened is some people who have died and then their grandchildren have opened up some of the cases and they found letters written to grandma from granddad who'd been involved in the First World War writing about And this had been so expunged from the history books and from the popular records. They said both sides stopped shooting on Christmas Day. And you can go today to Belgium and you'll see the landscape still pockmarked by the shell fire at one place in Passchendaele where Harry Patch fought, he said, amongst the blood and the mud. 300,000 people died in Passchendaele. The British planted five tons of high explosives on every square meter of land, which in a place like Belgium, which is low lands, it just meant it was turned into mud. And when they advanced, most of the men were killed just by drowning in the mud. They marched into the mud. and then their own artillery killed about the rest. Most of the British casualties at Passchendaele were own goals, basically, so-called friendly fire. And so amidst all the horrors of the First World War, this Christmas miracle, and these are some of the carols that people have put together. Here you can see some of the mingling of uniforms and people and the Christmas trees and the extraordinary experience. Everyone has said, along the whole Western Front, that Christmas day, 25 December 1914, crystal clear. not a cloud in the sky, clear frost on the ground, but it was a clear, neat day. They said it was actually quite good because the biting air acted like some kind of, instead of the smell of death that we normally have, that icy conditions, it didn't stink on that day. It was the first day we could breathe fresh air in many cases months. I don't know how many people are aware of the fact that famous authors, Christian authors like C.S. Lewis, who produced the Narnia series, fought on the Western Front. J. R. R. R. Tolkien, who was born in Bloomfielding, who wrote Lord of the Rings, he also fought on the Western Front, and he injected a lot of his experiences, his hatred of industrialization, and he saw how the beautiful village in England got annihilated by the factories of Birmingham just expanding over their lovely little idyllic scenes, and he put in a lot of his experiences Also he is bitten by a baboon spider when he is in Plumfersay and so the hatred for spiders comes in also into The Hobbit and into The Lord of the Rings too. A. A. Milne who wrote Winnie the Pooh, he also fought in the Western Front. A Christmas truce memorial was unveiled in Freilingen in France on 11 November 2008 at the spot where in 25 December 1914 the Royal Welsh Fusiliers played football with the German 371 Battalion. The Germans won 2-1. And so here, here's the Freilingen newspaper in France with the Anglais, the Germans, the Belgians and the French commemorating Christmas 1914. Isn't that an extraordinary thing? And here's the Christmas Truce Memorial in France. So there are re-enactors gathering. There's military history tours where you can visit different sites where the Christmas Truce took place. This is one that I went to, where Harry Patch also laid a wreath. And this was set up by the Australians. They're called the Karki Chums. 1999, 85 years later, some people who had been part of the Christmas Truce 85 years before came and set up this cross and put some footballs and wreaths and poppies down. And there was Felix, or Nestor, the cat, or at least the great great great great great grand kitty of the one that was in on that famous truce. And if you've seen the film, Joyce Noel on the Christmas Truce, you might think that they've invented stories like the cat but that's absolutely true and it's there's even the fact that the French high command ordered this cat to be court-martialed and shot for fraternizing with the enemy because this cat went between the lines between the Germans and the French and that's actually in the history books it happened that the French high command was they didn't just shoot 500 their own men they shot a cat for fraternizing with the enemy bizarre, but it didn't snuff out the hostility, the friendliness of the people. Here you can see some of the Australian flags, the Khaki Chums Christmas Truce. An extraordinary thing. These wheat fields used to be the killing fields across which they fought. The German trenches were curved, the British trenches were zigzagged. You can see the Germans tend to use the wooden wicker in between. The British tended to use corrugated iron or sandbags. And here you can see an extraordinary event that just took place this month. You can see German and British forces and Scottish coming together with the football and they're at one of these sites to commemorate and they had an official soccer match. In fact here you can see that they took it very seriously. The German team And here's the film Joe Ex Noël. 2005, the French produced this film, Joe Ex Noël, dramatising the Christmas Truce of 1914 through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers. And I've got a short clip to show you tonight on that too. And it's quite extraordinary. What's also extraordinary, I've got a short clip from, is Sainsbury, that's one of the top British department stores, They've produced a lovely, heart-moving tribute to the soldiers of the First World War with their Christmas 1914 advert. To think it's an advert means better than most films. So well done, and using re-enactors, people who know how soldiers of 1914 were different from 1915, what the trenches looked like, everything. They've got the details very accurate. When I went to the Imperial War Museum in July this year, I saw that the Christmas truce is now openly acknowledged at the Imperial War Museum, which once it would have been strength-reported on the Kennungstanderkette, don't even mention it. Now they've got photographs of German-British troops celebrating Christmas together on display. By the end of 1914, exhausted armies had sought safety in trenches. In opposing front lines, men endured the same wretched conditions, often with an earshot upon another. At Christmas, German and British soldiers emerged to meet in the frozen strip of mud between the trenches. They sang carols, exchanged presents from cigarettes and cigars to buttons and badges. But the seasonal goodwill could not last. Indeed, because the high commands reassigned them from one side to the other. And yet, even later, because in the first year nobody had helmets. Helmets only came in from about 1915. So this shows us later. But here you can see a French soldier trapped in the mud, being helped out by his concerned enemies. Verdun, where German and French fought one another to a standstill, were the most terrible slaughter of the war. And they today gather as friends. My father, who fought six years in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War, told me of the Christmas truce that they observed in North Africa in the Second World War, which I haven't read anywhere in any history book. And he said, oh no, no, that happened twice. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in North Africa. We stopped fighting, we sang Christmas carols, and we went and shared ration packs the next day and showed pictures of our families. And my mother, as a young girl with her father who was in Africa Corps, I remember hearing that Grandad was going to come and visit my Dad. And I was really concerned. My brother and I were wondering what's going to happen when Dad and Grandad meet because they fought one another in the war. Grandad was in the African Corps. Dad was in the 8th Army. They embraced as brothers. Extraordinary thing. Never forgot that even though I was very young. to see people who had been enemies in a war able to embrace and respect my father. My dad was king in an empire, he was queen in an empire person, everything for the British Empire, but his respect for Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps was sky high, and he said they were gentle, they were honourable people, and Here's another Christmas story from 1943. In 1943 this B-17 fighter bomber, this bomber had been bombing Germany and on the way out it obviously got horribly shot up and this Charlie Brown leading his American B-17 bomber and this is a German fighter ace, Lieutenant Stagler and Along came Steigler and he saw this plane shot up and he knew his duty was to shoot down the plane. It was 20th of December, just before Christmas, 1943. And he flew alongside and Charlie Brown says, when he saw this, he closed his eyes. He said, this can't be real. And he looked up again and he said, this man owned me. He said, we couldn't fight back. All of our men and the gunners were, they were wounded or killed. And he said, the plane was nearly finished. And instead, this Messerschmitt pilot indicated, follow me, and he escorted him out of the country, across the North Sea, and then let him, once he was safe, get back to Britain where they landed, and most of the crew survived. And they never spoke about it to the high command, until years later they met as good friends, and today they have reunited and written a book which is extraordinary. It's called A Higher Call. And that was 1943. Nobody knew about this for decades. This is what someone said. If they would have known what would have become of their countries, they wouldn't have fought against each other, they would have fought side by side. No more brother wars. Next time we fight it side by side against a real enemy, which is Islam and communism. If these guys can get along, you can make it through dinner with your relatives. It remains an extraordinary testimony to the power of the gospel that during such a terrible time of world war, soldiers of so many armies on opposing sides could stop fighting and come out of their trenches and embrace their enemies in honour of the Prince of Peace. It was a miracle. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end." That is the fact. When you speak about government, capital G, you've got to talk about God. He is the government who determines when the sun rises, when it sets, when we live, and when we die. He is the government. Civil governments are small g. always capitalized G for Gospel and S for Savior, L for Lord, B for Bible, and decapitalized State and Government, when it refers to civil government. I think that's just one important point to make the distinction. God is the government. Municipal or national governments, those are small fry in the scheme of things. God's government, his kingdom is forever. And so we do have a higher core. And no matter what our duties on earth, our highest allegiance is to God. And that means we'll have allegiance with brothers in Christ, even if they're on the other side of a line in a war. Of course, when you're fighting Radical Islam or Atheist Communism, that's a different story. They are not gentlemen. They do not obey the rules of law. This film I highly recommend, Jerks Noel. We've just produced the newsletter, the latest Christian action with the Christmas truce details. We've got a lot on history to help us recognize the lies of propaganda by studying the Word of God and studying history. There's a lot of these materials on our website. We've in fact got the Christmas Truce on the ReformationSA.org website with pictures. And on our Facebook page we are placing a lot of different materials. Now this year we've covered a lot on the catastrophe of the First World War, what led to it and evaluating the propaganda of the Great War, the clash of civilizations, the war on Christians in the Middle East, the Holocaust in Rwanda, evaluating Hollywood films. These are all just different facts that we can look at and you'll find a lot of these different resources available. So, Rudolf Hess, The Real Turning Point of World War II, Best of Enemies. This is a great book. Britain and Germany, Truth and Lies in Two World Wars. The Church History Manual, Church History Overview, these are some of the things we've covered this year, but what I'm particularly glad that we've now got available is the whole South African History box set, which includes these articles that have been done over the last couple of years for Joachim Taitzgriff on the French Huguenots and the Great Trek, and on Volta at Volta Madre, and the Battle of Blood River, and the Day of the Covenants, the 1860 revival. So these are on in both English and in Afrikaans, in typesetting and in lecture format, and the PowerPoints and the audio lectures, all in a box set to help for anybody wanting, any teacher wanting history resources. Especially our South African history is so under attack and the average child is not getting access to these great facts about our history which is being stolen. A country that does not remember its past does not have much of a future. It's vital that we know our past, and what a woman, Ebilee Hobbes, what a heroine, courageous to go against her own government at a time of madness, and to have done that twice. Goodness me, she must have been super unpopular in her own country for having done that, but to have people with that kind of conscience means a lot. The symbolism of the Christmas tree. Martin Luther said the Christmas tree should remind us of the tree of life that was forfeited in the garden. It should remind us of the wood of the crib into which Jesus was born, a humble place of inclination. The wood of the cross on which he is nailed. The gold around it should remind us that he's destined not just for the crib and the cross but the crown. He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The gifts around the tree should remind us of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The decoration of the tree should remind us of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. And the candles remind us of you are the light of the world. And the star on the top to remind us of the star of Bethlehem. So he used the Christmas tree to symbolize the gospel. The red of Christmas, the blood of Christ. The green, growth. So there's a lot that you can use. But Christmas should be all about Christ. We need to remind people of the reason for the season. Even something like Holly, it's to remind us of the crown of thorns. Wise people still seek Christ.