For The First Day Of Christmas: Strangers Brought To Their Knees At Mangers

I had heard similar stories of a temporary truce in WWI, but not
about this one in the earlier Franco-Prussian War. 

"O Holy Night," one of my favorite carols, was written for a Christmas Eve service in 1847 at the request of a French priest celebrating the installation of a new organ at his church. He had his friend Placie Appeau write the words, and asked another friend, Adolphe Charles Adams, to set it to music in time for the occasion. 

The new carol, "Cantique de Noel," was an  immediate sensation, but when some church leaders later learned that Cappeau was a socialist and Adams a Jew, the song was banned from use in church services, though it remained popular among the French people.

Boston-based musician John Sullivan Wright, a Unitarian minister and an abolitionist, translated the song into English and introduced it to America ten years later. He was especially fond of the words in the third verse (Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother), and his English version of the carol became a favorite among many, especially in the North.

Some years later, in a lull in the fierce fighting of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, an unarmed French soldier emerged from the trenches and sang the French version of the song, and was briefly joined by some enemy soldiers responding with German carols. 

The Christmas story continues to be about bringing unlikely strangers together, on their knees. Gentile astrologers from the far east bow down, as do Jewish shepherds from the hills around Bethlehem. Socialist musicians are brought together with Catholic priests and Jewish poets. French and German soldiers lay down their arms, if only briefly, all bowed by the miracle of God coming to life in a most vulnerable way. Around one common manger we experience a foretaste of friends and enemies alike being born again into a revolutionary, upside-down reign of shalom for all people.

Truly he taught us to love one another

His law is love and his gospel is peace.

Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother

We know that through him oppression shall cease.

Note: I hope to again post something for each of the twelve days of Christmas, this time mostly from some of my radio spots aired each holiday season on a couple of local stations.