******I saw the movie "Joyeux Noel" (Merry Christmas). I am a sucker for these sort of feel-good dramas, but it WAS based on a historical event. The premise is how on the front lines during WWI the Scottish and French, and the Germans spontaneously called a truce and traded gifts and had a Christmas service. Perhaps most famously, they even played a game of soccer.

The movie was good, I have no reservations about that. It was the humane artists who brought the people together. The emotional climax is, in fact when a German tenor on the front lines starts singing "Adeste Fideles" (O Come All Ye Faithful) on Christmas Eve (in Latin the pan-Western European language!) and both sides join in.

The only thing that gave me a bit of a pause was it's use as Christendom as the unifying ideology of Europe. Don't get me wrong, I wish it was... But I'm not sure, even in 1914. The movie portrayed the Scots as Catholics, and while there always have been Scottish Catholics, most are Presbyterian. Likewise not all the Germans are Catholic. So when everyone united for the Christmas mass... I wanted to believe it, but I almost couldn't suspend disbelief.

Don't get me wrong Christianity was certainly common ground in 1914, but Christians in Europe had been treating each other in most unchristian fashion for hundreds of years... Regardless, the truce happened, and that IS the most plausible explanation, even if the dramatic characterization isn't totally accurate.

A movie to watch if you're feeling misanthropic and need to be reminded that men have a propensity to be much nobler than those who lead them.