Today is Christmas Eve. Old folk beliefs which died out in England in Victorian times hold that at the stroke of midnight tonight, the cows kneel down in their stalls, or out in the fields, paying homage to the newborn baby Jesus. Other stories tell that the bees on this night would come out of their winter slumbers to hum a hymn of praise to God. Disbelievers in this latter story were informed that only those who had lived a blameless life could hope to hear the song of the bees.
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
‘Now they are all on their knees,’
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
Thomas Hardy, ‘The Oxen’
Peace broke out on the Western Front during the First World War on Christmas Eve in 1914. Soldiers began to applaud carol-singing they could hear in the enemy trenches, and signs were hoisted saying ’No shooting’, or ‘Merry Christmas’. Men from the German, British and French lines met each other in no man’s land, where they exchanged chocolates, caps, badges, plum pudding and whisky, took group photographs, played football on the frozen ground, and buried their dead comrades from the recent fighting.
‘Then suddenly lights began to appear along the German parapet, which were evidently makeshift Christmas trees, adorned with lighted candles, which burnt steadily in the still, frosty air! Then our opponents began to sing “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht”. They finished their carol and we thought that we ought to retaliate in some way, so we sang “The First Nowell”, and when we finished that they all began clapping; and then they struck up another favourite of theirs, “O Tannenbaum”. And so it went on. First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up “O Come All Ye Faithful” the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words “Adeste Fideles”. And I thought, well, this was really a most extraordinary thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.’ Rifleman Graham Williams, Christmas Eve at Ploegsteert, Franco-Belgian border
At 4 o’clock this morning on Christmas Eve in the year 820, the Byzantine Emperor Leo V was murdered during matins in his own imperial chapel. His assassins dressed in monks’ robes, perfect for hiding their swords and daggers, and waited in the early morning dimness of the chapel for the emperor to arrive. They struck during the first hymn, at first mistaking the officiating priest for the emperor, which gave him time to swing a heavy cross in self-defence. But he was hacked to pieces next to the altar, and his remains were dumped in the snow outside.
Tonight was Nittel Nacht for European Jewish people in medieval through to modern times, when families would stay indoors playing dice, cards or chess, while Christians began their celebration of Christmas. The Church prohibited Jews from being outdoors during the Christmas and Easter festivals, and they faced attack if they were seen in the streets, so Jewish shops, schools and synagogues simply closed. As well as playing games, many Jewish communties used the time to read derogatory Jewish legends about Jesus, the Toledot Yeshu, giving a parody version of his birth, life and death. In some areas of Eastern Europe, the night was also known as Dark Night, or Fearful Night, speaking of the shadow side of Christmas for people outside the Christian tradition.
Pope Pius XII gave a Christmas radio broadcast today in 1942, several months after the Nazis had initiated the deadliest phase of the Holocaust, the industrialised killing of the Jewish people of Europe. In the previous year, the Nazis had opened Polish death camps in Bełżec, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka, and an estimated 1.2 million men, women and children had been murdered there. A week before the broadcast, 11 allied governments had issued a joint condemnation using stark and specific language, saying that Poland had become ‘the principal Nazi slaughterhouse’. In contrast, the broadcast by Pope Pius talked about the genocide in general terms, did not name the perpetrators, and failed to use the words ‘Nazi’ or ‘Jew’. However, it was the closest the pope ever came to addressing the Holocaust.
‘Humanity owes this vow to those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been marked down for death or gradual extinction.’ Pope Pius XII
Image: The Met