World War I is probably the worst war to be a soldier because thanks to trench warfare there wasn't any movement. You were stuck all day in the same place surrounded by the dead bodies of your pals. Soldiers would write back home, saying the ground was soft from all corpses they buried, with hands still sticking out of the ground or poking from the walls. And they just didn't decay. You'd see the torso of a dude who died last week next to the head of the guy a month before next to the legs of a guy from years previous. That's on top of being shelled at by cannons (and remember in the first year of the war no one had helmets), living under open sky in a hole in the ground. If you were up near the Belgian part of the line, there was literally mud up to the waist in some parts. It's no wonder that thousands of soldiers went mad.

But there's a crazy phenomenon that happened on December 25, 1914, all up and down the line on the western front. British Private William Quinton described it as such:

All around us lay about three inches of snow. A typical picture-postcard Christmas. Things were very quiet. That "peace and goodwill to all men" feeling seemed to be in the air. We could hear the Germans still strafing up Ypres away, but the next night, Christmas Eve, even up there was much quieter. Something in the direction of the German lines caused us to rub our eyes and look again. Here and there, showing just above their parapet, we could see very faintly what looked like very small, colored lights. What was this? Was it some prearranged signal and the forerunner of an attack? Or was it to make us curious and thus expose ourselves to the sudden raking of machine gun fire? We were very suspicious and we were discussing this strange move of the enemy when something even stranger happened. The Germans were actually singing. Not very loud, but there was no mistaking it. We began to get very interested. The enemy at least were going to enjoy themselves as much as the circumstances would permit. Suddenly, across the snow-clad No-Man's Land, a strong, clear voice rang out, singing the opening lines of Annie Laurie. It was sung in perfect English and we were spellbound. No other sound but this unknown singer's voice. To us, it seemed like the war had suddenly stopped, stopped to listen to this song from one of the enemy. Not a sound from friend or foe, and as the last notes died away, a spontaneous outburst of clapping arose from our trenches. Encore! Good ol' Fritz!

The front lines of the Central and Entente Powers stopped giving a shit about the war and fraternized on Christmas Day. There were reports of people actually leaving their trenches — extremely brave considering just twenty-four hours earlier even just peeping above would've gotten forty machine guns trained right at you — and exchanging gifts or playing soccer matches. The generals on both sides were horrified when they learned of this and prevented it from happening again, so it was only a 1914 phenomenon. But to me, this event just seems insane. Almost 10,000,000 soldiers died over the course of this war. How on earth do you forget all that death and suffering for one moment and just hang out with the people who shot your friends the day before? How can you accept chocolates from a French or German soldier, knowing this man may kill you tomorrow?

But at the same time, it shows how fucking stupid World War I was. At the end of the day, the reason behind it was war for war's sake. Tensions were building up between these nations for about fifty years and everyone thought at some point everything would explode. When Archduke Ferdinand was shot, pretty much every power rolled up their sleeves and said, "Okay, let's do this," and few people foresaw the horror that would unfold. And it was the people on the front lines who suffered for it. That Christmas was a representation of this: the realization that this shit is completely nuts and we're going to fucking enjoy our holiday for once, goddammit. Unfortunately even at the very end most didn't come to the same conclusion until literally the male population of some countries were nearly wiped out. But for one day, one white Christmas, it seemed like Europe had somewhat returned to normal and people could enjoy themselves.