It's a Christmas irony, if you will: by insisting that everyone say Merry Christmas and honor ONLY the displays of a Christian Holiday, the SPIRIT of Christmas is defeated. Christmas becomes exclusionary, and "Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men" becomes secondary.
And the images of soldiers on both sides of a war ceasing hostilities for a day becomes meaningless because they are celebrating the Spirit of Christmas instead of the actual birth of Christ. The silence of a militarized zone is not as pleasing as the sound of hymns sung in a church.
The Amazing Christmas Truce of 1914
It may never happen again. It happened almost one hundred years ago during the horrible waste of lives called the Great War... and it was SECULAR. There were no mangers, no Nativity scenes, no cries of "Merry Christmas." Yes, there were some Christmas carols, a recitation of the 23rd Psalm (hardly Christmas material) and Christmas trees (which are, after all, totally secular icons - related to Winter Solstice - no matter how many angel ornaments you hang on them). But amidst the savagery of war, soldiers laid down their arms and sought the friendship of the enemy: they walked across "No Man's Land" and exchanged pleasantries and even ... gifts.
It was the time when the Christmas Spirit transcended Christmas itself - and it probably saved lives, if not souls.
Bruce Bairnsfather, who served throughout the war, wrote: "I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything. ... I spotted a German officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons. ... I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then gave him two of mine in exchange. ... The last I saw was one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a docile Boche, who was patiently kneeling on the ground whilst the automatic clippers crept up the back of his neck."[10]
General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps, was irate when he heard what was happening, and issued strict orders forbidding friendly communication with the opposing German troops. [8]
Adolf Hitler, then a young corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, was a notable opponent of the truce. [8]
Of course, since the enemy today is usually of a different religion, such a thing as a Christmas truce could never really happen, right?* But perhaps the problem lies more in perception than actual religious difference: because the enemy has a different religion, he is perceived to be nearly inhuman and any form of commonality suffers.
So it is with exclusion that the Spirit of Christmas is diminished by a sense of propriety over Christmas. Ironically it was the strategy of inclusion that created what we know as Christmas in the first place: incorporating winter solstice traditions and pagan rituals into Christianity to celebrate the birth of Christ.**
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