Joyeux Noel

[gossa]

I watched a new DVD called 'Joyeux Noel', which is French for Merry Christmas evidently. It's a foreign film about a true event of WWI when German, French, and Scottish soldiers came out of their trenches sporadically along a 70 mile front, and met in no-man's land on Christmas Eve to join together in recognition of Christ's Birthday.

The movie has no cursing in it, but there is one small but mild love scene that could have been left out, so it's PG-13. The French and German speaking is in subtitles, but not the English parts.

Per History, the way it began was on the German side, with a professional opera tenor being sent to the German front trenches to sing Christmas Noel's for the German troops. The Scots in their trenches played their bag-pipes in tune with the singer, and both Scots and French on their sides cheered and applauded. The German tenor then came out of the German trenches to no-man's land to see who was applauding him. The French commander, a lover of music and who recognized the professional tenor's voice, came out of his trench to greet him. Then the commanding Scot officer came out of his trench. After a while, the rest of the men all came out to no'man's land and greeted each other, and agreed to a cease-fire to celebrate Christmas.

The German and French high command got wind of the event afterwards, through their mail censorship programs, and found soldiers on each side exchanging home addresses so they could visit each other after the war. Some of the French soldiers commented in their letters home on how much better the German trenches were, showing they had visited them. The event stumped the high command of each army, and they split up the units after the event, because there were reports each side was reluctant to fire on each other after the event. There were even reports that one side would call over to the enemy to let them know artillery was getting ready to shell them, and so invited them over to shelter in their trenches until the artillery barage was over.

What a powerful witness by our Lord Christ Jesus! Most of the soldiers on both sides didn't know the real reason why they were fighting each other. And the fact they were able to make such a cease-fire agreement showed their true feelings was towards peace and not war.

God bless.

[Soldier4Christ]

Hello gossa,

Welcome to Christians Unite.

There are many such stories of the Military and war time. Unfortunately very few of them make it out to the public.

God is great and can bring people together from all over.

[Chaplain Bob]

Whether or not all the details are accurate I don't know but I do know this story is well known to us in the "older generation" and is a source of inspiration each Christmas season.

Let's hope we spend this Christmastime sharing with people Who it is we honor and not moan and grown about the "commercialism", "pagan origins", accuracy of Jesus' birthdate, Santa or any other "anti-Christian" trappings of the holiday.  We can find opportunities to share the Lord in every aspect of Christmas.  He is, after all, the greatest Gift.

[Soldier4Christ]

Amen!

It is important that old stories like this ( and what is the newest yet oldest story of all but Jesus and the cross) with everyone we can especially with our youth that have not had the opportunity to hear this wonderful story elsewhere.

Many of our youth of today are being deprived of hearing about God as anything to do with Jesus Christ is being removed from our public.