A Column for the Holidays
It's that time of year again. The calendar shows December 24th, and the world pauses. For a moment, at least. The hustle and bustle in the department stores subsides, the streets empty, and somewhere someone is singing Silent Night. Christmas. This holiday that we all think we know, yet which surprises us anew each year – with its warmth, its melancholy, and sometimes even its banality. But what are we actually celebrating? And why do we do it the way we do? These questions are not merely academic. They lead us to the core of what makes us human: the longing for light in the darkness, for community in loneliness, for peace amidst war.
On the Origins of a Holy Night
The history of Christmas, like so much in cultural history, is a history of adoption and transformation. December 25th was not always Christ's birthday. There is no mention of this date in the Bible. The first Christians primarily celebrated Easter – the resurrection was the essential element, not the birth. What could be more significant than the victory over death? It wasn't until the 4th century, under Emperor Constantine, that December 25th became established as a feast day. Rome already knew this day: as the birthday of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, the winter solstice. On this day, the Romans celebrated the victory of light over darkness. In the circus, there were thirty races instead of the usual twenty-four, and solstice bonfires illuminated the night.
The Church, wise and pragmatic, adopted the pagan festival and gave it new meaning. The light returning in the darkest night of the year became a symbol for Christ, the light of the world. In 381, the Council of Constantinople confirmed December 25th as the official date for the feast. From Rome, the custom spread to Egypt, Gaul, and Germania. The Synod of Mainz officially declared the day the Feast of the Nativity of Christ in 813. The Christmas tree, this German invention, only came into use in the 19th century, when the English royal family, with its German roots, spread the custom throughout the world. And Santa Claus? A mixture of Saint Nicholas and American Coca-Cola advertising. The tradition as we know it is young. But it has grown dear to our hearts.
How the Poets Celebrated
Thomas Mann loved Christmas. For him, Christmas Eve, as he once wrote, was surrounded by an "incomparable magic." In Buddenbrooks, he created a literary monument to this magic. The famous Christmas chapter, in which the Consul's wife receives her guests, the enormous fir tree, adorned with silver tinsel and topped with an angel, fills the great hall with its fragrance, and little Hanno waits feverishly with excitement for the presents—it is one of the most beautiful Christmas scenes in German literature. "Through the cracks of the tall, white-lacquered, still firmly closed double doors, the scent of fir trees drifted in, and with its sweet spice awakened the idea of the wonders within the hall," Mann wrote. These lines are more than literature—they are a record of longing.
Mann himself celebrated in the style of this Lübeck merchant family: with Bible readings, choral singing, and a ceremony that combined bourgeois dignity with childlike anticipation. Even in American exile, during the dark years of World War II, he clung to these traditions. In 1940, while the world was ablaze in Europe, he wrote in his diary one Christmas Eve: “And finally, like a proper family man, I read from the Bible.” Man, the ironic master, who so readily saw through religious rituals in his work—at Christmas, he became a devout child.
Ernest Hemingway celebrated differently. On Christmas Day 1923, at just 24 years old and living in Paris with his first wife, Hadley, he wrote an article for the Toronto Star entitled “Christmas on the Roof of the World.” He described Paris in the snow, the large braziers glowing red outside the cafés, the men with turned-up collars sipping their grog while the newsboys called out the evening papers. The buses rumbled like green Juggernats through the snow falling at dusk. “Snow is never more beautiful than in the city,” Hemingway wrote. Then came the train ride to the Swiss Alps, the skiing, the descent “in a long, falling, heart-pounding rush” down to the chalet, where a royal feast awaited.
Hemingway loved simple pleasures: snow, exercise, good food, good company. His Christmases were not a religious event, but a celebration of physical existence. Later, in Arkansas, where his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, was from, he celebrated in an old farmhouse, hunting with his family. The man of action, the great hunter and adventurer, found in Christmas a moment of peace—that rare stillness he otherwise sought only at sea or in the mountains.
Erich Kästner, on the other hand, brought his satirical perspective to the Christmas season. For him, Christmas Eve was “the most beautiful evening of a child’s year”—but Kästner wouldn’t be Kästner if he hadn’t also questioned this idyllic scene. His Christmas carol, "Chemically Cleaned" from 1927, is a biting parody of the social conditions of the Weimar Republic: "Tomorrow, children, there will be nothing! / Only those who have, will receive presents." The Dresden author, who grew up in modest circumstances, knew about the social coldness that can lurk behind the warmth of Christmas. He knew the children who stood in front of strangers' windows and watched others receive gifts.
In his poem "December" from the cycle "The Thirteen Months," Kästner wrote perhaps the most melancholic lines about the end of the year: "You were a child too. You felt for yourself / how sweetly Christmas trees bloom. / Now you played Santa Claus / and no longer believe in him." The poem ends with the words: "The year knows its last day, and you don't know yours." Kästner loved Christmas—but he loved it with the eyes of an adult who had lost his innocence and, precisely for that reason, knew its value.
Max Frisch, the Swiss skeptic, the eternally torn between bourgeois and artistic existence, left behind no major Christmas texts. Frisch was a man of doubt, not of celebration. His diaries, these precise self-examinations, are largely silent on the holidays. Perhaps Christmas was too unambiguous for him, too burdened with expectations, too permeated by rituals he wasn't allowed to question. Frisch favored the unresolved, the fragmentary, the question without an answer. A festival that promised harmony must have seemed suspect to him. And yet: In his work, in Stiller and Homo Faber, one finds a longing for security, for a place to arrive, for a home beyond all irony. This longing is the heart of Christmas.
Of Christmas Trees and Roast Goose
What are the essential elements of Christmas in Germany? The tree, of course, decorated with candles, baubles, and tinsel. The nativity scene with the wax figure of the baby Jesus. Roast goose with red cabbage and dumplings, or carp, depending on the region. The cookies that Mother baked weeks in advance: vanilla crescents, cinnamon stars, and speculoos. The carols: Silent Night, O Christmas Tree, Every Year Again, From Heaven Above to Earth I Come. The Christmas Eve service, where the Christmas Vespers are sung. The gift-giving, during which the children can hardly sit still with excitement. The visit to grandparents on Christmas Day, the big meal on Boxing Day. All these are rituals that connect generations. They give the year structure and life a rhythm.
But Christmas is more than the sum of its customs. It is a promise. The promise that there is light in the midst of darkness. That warmth is possible in the midst of cold. That people who have remained strangers all year can come together for one evening. This promise is fragile. It is often broken—by arguments, by disappointment, by the weight of expectations. But it is renewed every year. Therein lies its power.
The Peace That Came from the Trenches
Flanders, December 24, 1914. A starry night. The soldiers are freezing in the trenches. For five months, the First World War has raged, that “seminal catastrophe of the 20th century,” as the historian George F. Kennan called it. The Western Front is frozen. Germans and British face each other, separated only by no man’s land—a strip of devastated earth, littered with barbed wire and corpses. Already 160,000 English, 300,000 French, and 300,000 Germans have lost their lives. The men in the trenches are tired, exhausted, without hope. They think of their families, of Christmas at home, which they may never experience again.
Then the unbelievable happens. A voice rises from the German trenches. Someone is singing Silent Night. The British listen. When the song ends, they shout: “Encore! Good singing, old Fritz!” Candles are lit, small Christmas trees are placed on the parapets. A Saxon first lieutenant is said to have told the British: “We are Saxons, you are Anglo-Saxons—why should we shoot each other?” Slowly, hesitantly, soldiers climb out of their trenches. They meet in no man’s land. They exchange cigarettes, chocolate, and schnapps. They show each other photos of their wives and children. They bury their dead together. In some places, they play football.
“Between the trenches, the most hated and bitter enemies stand around the Christmas tree and sing Christmas carols,” the Bavarian soldier Josef Wenzl wrote to his parents. “I will never forget that sight.” An estimated 100,000 soldiers participated in this spontaneous truce. It wasn't an order from above. It was a revolt from below—a revolt of humanity against the madness of war. Michael Jürgs dedicated an entire book to this event: “The Little Peace in the Great War.”
The Christmas Truce of 1914 lasted only a few days. In some places, even until New Year's Day. Then the generals ordered shooting to resume. The men who had just been singing together had to aim at each other again. Many of them did not survive the war. Josef Wenzl fell on May 6, 1917. But the story endured. It shows what is possible when people refuse to be enemies. It shows that peace sometimes comes from below, from the mud of the trenches, from the hearts of ordinary soldiers.
A Message for Our Time
Today, more than a hundred years later, war has returned to Europe. People are dying in Ukraine. The earth is burning in the Middle East. In many parts of the world, the weapons do not fall silent, not even at Christmas. The hope for peace sometimes seems naive, almost ridiculous. And yet: precisely for this reason, we must hold fast to it.
The Christmas Truce of 1914 was not sentimentality. It was an act of resistance. The soldiers in the trenches knew that the war would continue. They knew that their superiors would forbid them from fraternizing. But they did it anyway. For a moment, they placed their humanity above orders. That is the true message of Christmas: not the sweet idyll, but the courage for peace. Not the mulled wine idyll, but the will to reconciliation.
What can we do to keep this message alive? Perhaps first of all: not to become cynical. Not to confuse the commercialization of the holiday with its essence. Sing the old songs, even if our voices sometimes break. Cultivate the traditions, not out of nostalgia, but because they connect us with those who came before us and those who will come after. And above all: don't just wish for peace at Christmas, but work towards it all year round – in the small things of everyday life as well as in the big political issues.
A Christmas Wish
Dear readers, I wish you and your families a blessed Christmas. May you find moments of peace amidst all the hustle and bustle. May you be surrounded by people you love and who love you. May you have and maintain good health. And may you, as you sit beneath the tree on Christmas Eve, watching the candles flicker, feel for a moment what the soldiers of 1914 must have felt: that peace is possible. That it begins within us. That it is stronger than all hatred, stronger than all enmity, stronger than war.
With this in mind: Merry Christmas. And peace on earth.
"The message of Christmas: There is no greater power than love. It overcomes hatred as light overcomes darkness."
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Sapere aude!
S.
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