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In the film The Monuments Men, the silence of World War II on Christmas Eve, when the fighting has temporarily ceased and people are in the camps, some decide to play the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” over the loudspeakers, sung so softly that it seems to break the frostiness if anyone breathes too loudly. The promise of the song – “next year all our troubles will be out of sight” — is the kind of phrase that sounds almost illegal when history is in turmoil. This is the strange, persistent chemistry of Christmas in wartime, not innocence, but a brief respite from despair.

One world war prior, 30 years ago, around December 24–25, 1914, the “Christmas Truce” was not a treaty or an order, but an informal, spontaneous ceasefire that spread across parts of the Western Front. Across about two-thirds of a 30-mile front held by the British Expeditionary Force, the guns fell silent for a while, not everywhere and certainly not with the approval of the higher-ups. In the summer of 1914, many European societies had entered the war with enthusiasm and the delusion that “it would be over by Christmas,” but within a few months, casualties had already skyrocketed and the front had become locked in a bloody stalemate, from the Swiss border to the North Sea, with December having arrived and the reality of trench warfare now firmly established. 

               

Conditions were tragic, with weeks of rain, mud everywhere, and a frozen No Man’s Land between lines that were less than 45 meters apart in places. The worst atrocities, such as the chemical attacks in the Second Battle of Ypres, had not yet arrived, so the soldiers had seen battle, but not yet the “ultimate” industrial slaughter that would follow. There was even an attempt to establish an official truce. On December 7, Pope Benedict XVI appealed for “silence of the guns” at least on Christmas Eve, but political and military leaders showed no interest. Nevertheless, “small” initiatives pushed people toward the improbable, the frost stopped the rain, a light snow covered Flanders, and the Kaiser sent Christmas trees to the trenches; on December 23, German soldiers set them up outside the trenches and sang “Stille Nacht,” with the Allied lines responding with their own carols. Where the British faced Saxons, who were considered “more reliable” and had often worked in Britain before the war, communication became easier and the truce was more widely accepted, while in the French zones, due to the occupation of French territory by Germany, anger made fraternization much more difficult.

By Christmas Eve, some lower-ranking British officers had already adopted the informal logic of “live and let live” (“don’t shoot unless you are shot at”) and on Christmas morning, the Germans came out unarmed, waving their arms to show their peaceful intentions; when the British believed them, they came out too and met in No Man’s Land to socialize, exchange small gifts, even play football with them the next day. Censorship had not yet been imposed on correspondence; the letters talk about football, food, and drink with people who “yesterday” were mortal enemies, but also about joint burial ceremonies for the dead in the middle zone, and the tacit awareness that this peace would be temporary, so that both sides could take advantage of the truce to improve their trenches.

It wasn’t universal—fighting continued elsewhere, and commanders worried fraternisation could corrode discipline.  Even so, the scale of men openly gathering between trenches in daylight made it one of the war’s most unsettling interruptions: proof that “enemy” was still, at least for a moment, a reversible category.

So, is a Christmas truce possible today?

In Europe’s Christmas scenes, the idea of a truce returns every year like a mantra — but in 2025 it returns amid noise: negotiations, ultimatums, and a continent learning to live without the old certainties of security. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz openly describes this shift as a need for European autonomy from the US — and this is not just geopolitics: it is the new “climate” in which every call for a truce is given meaning. Just before Christmas-time, Merz said, “perhaps, the Russian government still has some remnants of humanity and will leave people in peace for a few days. This could become the beginning of peace.”

“Even today, there are calls for a Christmas truce, for example from Pope Leo XIV. However, a truce is only possible if both sides are genuinely interested in it. The Christmas truce of 1914 was unique in that it was not an agreement between political leaders or military commanders, but a spontaneous initiative by soldiers on the front lines,” said Martin Ducháč, a political scientist and a teacher at the PPLE College at the University of Amsterdam for PulseZ.

In Ukraine, however, the discussion of a “Christmas truce” is not unfounded: in December 2025, the Ukrainian side itself proposed a festive ceasefire, while the Kremlin explicitly linked it to a broader “peace settlement” and rejected the logic of a simple, temporary truce.

“It took place in the first year of the war on the Western Front, mainly between British and German troops, at a time when the worst horrors, such as chemical attacks, Verdun, and the Somme, had not yet arrived. Many soldiers and officers still perceived the enemy as an “honorable foe” rather than an existential threat,” Ducháč added.

In this case, modern warfare, and especially when the discussion turns to Ukraine, there are many differences, one of which is asymmetry, as we are not talking about a conflict between two “equal” parties that simply clashed. We are talking about a war of invasion and occupation, where one side is fighting for survival and the other is seeking political and territorial control. We have a war where one side is resisting invasion/occupation and the other is insisting on maximalist goals, according to recent assessments of information about Ukraine’s unchanged ambitions for control. At the same time, the context of violence (attacks on infrastructure/civilians, climate of fear in the occupied areas) and documented abuses of prisoners of war erode any “common moral language” that would allow for a spontaneous, bottom-up meeting of people. Even when the ideological narrative itself questions Ukrainian identity (e.g., the rhetoric of “one people”), “empathy” risks becoming a tool of false equivalence.

“On the Eastern Front, developments were more dynamic, and the different calendar also played a role. While Christmas was celebrated on December 25 in the West, in Russia, according to the Julian calendar, Christmas was not until January 7. Until 2023, Ukraine also celebrated Christmas according to the Julian calendar. The move to December 25 is a symbolic gesture of distancing itself from Russian cultural and religious influence,” said Ducháč.

Precisely in Ukraine, the calendar became a field of cultural domination. In 2018–2019, the division of Christian church, or ecclesiastical schism, came with the recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as autocephalous (independent), a process that culminated in the granting of the Tomos of Autocephaly by the Ecumenical Patriarchate on January 6, 2019. In this context, the transfer of the official Christmas holiday to December 25 (by a law signed by Zelensky in July 2023 and implemented for the first time in 2023) serves as a symbolic declaration of detachment from the Russian ecclesiastical/cultural orbit in the midst of war. And “Julian Christmas” is not another holiday but another way of measuring time: in the 20th–21st centuries, December 25 on the Julian calendar falls 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar—corresponding to January 7.

In this context, a spontaneous “Christmas truce” between soldiers is practically impossible, not because the human need for a respite from conflict has disappeared, but because the field itself—militarily, morally, symbolically—has been sealed with asymmetry and existential stakes. Professor Giuliana Tiripelli (De Montfort University, Leicester) offered expert reflections in response to questions submitted by European Youth Press (EYP)/Pulse Z, saying that: “Any atypical or grassroots moment, whether genuine or staged, has the potential to alter perceptions of moral authority and political credibility. As a result, governments and military commands invest heavily in controlling narratives and in suppressing or re-framing spontaneous events that could disrupt their control on their war-justifying discourse. This is precisely why such moments are less likely to emerge or endure today. We can see this, for example, in the limited visibility given to Israeli peace activists protesting at the Gaza border in support of Palestinians over recent months – and many other situations of this kind.” 

The “moment” that could have been born between two lines of trenches in 1914 is now in danger of being interpreted as weakness, as a trap, as a propaganda trophy; and so it does not even have a chance to exist. In such circumstances, anything that resembles a pause can only come “from above” as an official, verifiable agreement, as an exchange of prisoners, as a humanitarian corridor, like small technical respites in a great political suffocation. And somewhere here begins the second, more insidious front, the information front, where the battlefield leaves no room for spontaneous humanity, where the way we narrate it—and the way the internet swallows it up—can make it either invisible or dangerous.

 

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The changes in understanding solidarity

“Solidarity among soldiers in 1914 took the form of personal contact between the warring parties in no man’s land. The nature of today’s conflict does not allow for anything similar. The Russian way of waging war (scorched earth tactics, violence against civilians, destruction of infrastructure in the rear) prevents Ukrainian soldiers from perceiving the enemy as people on the other side,” said Ducháč.

The systematic torture of prisoners of war, using physical and psychological methods,  already reported on by the Human Rights Watch, are considered war crimes according to the Geneva Conventions. The inhumane conditions for both POWs and civilians in Russian detention centers have been monitored and detailed. 

Russia is then unapologetically defending their actions by spreading disinformation not only in their own country but also by massive foreign information manipulation channels, especially in Europe. 

“On the Russian side, the conflict is framed by propaganda as a fight against “Ukrainian fascists” or as the “liberation” of territories that allegedly belong to Russia historically. At the same time, the technological nature of the war is changing the physical space of the battlefield. Drones and other reconnaissance and attack systems make open terrain extremely dangerous, significantly limiting any free movement in contact zones,” he added. 

Modern war information space

In modern warfare, “solidarity” is no longer generated primarily by physical presence side by side, as it was then across the trenches and by delayed material transfers through letters, but by a constant mediation of images, clips and testimonies that turn us into a distanced audience. Lilie Chouliaraki describes this condition as a form of “testimony” to violence through the media, a global audience called upon to feel, judge, and take a stand because it can “see” there. But this visibility is nothing more than a double-edged sword; it can cultivate the imagination of solidarity, make the unknown familiar, or turn into a spectacle that exhausts, desensitizes, and ultimately instrumentalizes vulnerability. 

Solidarity is not born only from “rational” arguments, but also from the cultivation of our imagination—from narratives that accustom us to seeing “strangers” as kindred spirits. This mediation carries a risk: vulnerability, circulated as spectacle, can be turned into a moralizing tool, into an “economy” of symbols that either motivates or exhausts—and then solidarity is no longer a handshake in No Man’s Land, and every story can function either as evidence or as propaganda, either as a call to action or as a tool of cynicism.

At the same time, Professor Tiripelli deepened the discussion, pointing out that:

“In asymmetric wars today, journalists must avoid false equivalence while still preserving accuracy, nuance, and human complexity, especially when empathy itself can be weaponised. One useful framework here is the distinction between negative peace and positive peace. This gives journalists an analytical grid for assessing what is actually happening on the ground. Facts are not limited to what is immediately visible or directly observable through in-person testimony […] This – giving the full picture – prevents that empathy is weaponised, and equivalence used, in asymmetric wars. Using the negative peace framework makes visible the war elements that are structurally present during “peace”, when bombs temporarily stop falling or when violence disappears from television screens, as we are currently seeing with Gaza, where civilian suffering continues despite reduced media attention.” 

Solidarity is not born only from “rational” arguments, but also from the cultivation of our imagination—from narratives that accustom us to seeing “strangers” as kindred spirits. This mediation carries a risk: vulnerability, circulated as spectacle, can be turned into a moralizing tool, into an “economy” of symbols that either motivates or exhausts—and then solidarity is no longer a handshake in No Man’s Land, and every story can function either as evidence or as propaganda, either as a call to action or as a tool of cynicism.

“Added to this is the battle for information space. Communication from the front line is strictly controlled and filtered so as not to weaken morale or give the enemy an advantage. Any gesture of empathy towards the enemy can immediately become the subject of propaganda and serve as evidence of weakness or betrayal,” said Ducháč. 

Has this changed over the course of the war? A recent study compared president Zelensky’s social media posts before and after the full-scale invasion, and describes a big shift from television based-media events to social media. There, the unscripted, often traumatic experiences serve as a politician’s account of the war. One thing is “desensitizing” the public across the globe, when videos and photographs from  Bakhmut or Bucha flooded the online space. 

However, this type of content is also used as a way to clearly show who the oppressor is. Do you think sanctions implementation can wait? Here is an article with images showing Pokrovsk, two weeks ago. The talks about aiding Ukraine take too much of our national news channels? Here is a video from an aerial attack in Zaporizhzhia, a week before Christmas. The frontline on social media is used by both sides and increasingly since the beginning. Back in 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started, the media were reporting on the smart use of social media by Ukraine, and that it’s winning on the social media front.

War doesn’t kill only in winter

In such an environment, publicly visible, spontaneous solidarity between soldiers is practically impossible-politically, socially, and psychologically. Any truce or cooperation must therefore come from “above,” as formally agreed measures, such as prisoner exchanges or the establishment of humanitarian corridors.

In 1914, soldiers from both sides dared to lay down their weapons in the snow for a moment and share cigarettes and songs. That unlikely truce seems almost mythical today. In Ukraine, there is no symmetry of pain, as it is a case of a just cause with a strong moral asymmetry between the parties. At the same time, the invasion has been cloaked in a relentless propaganda narrative that portrays Ukrainians as “insects” or “Nazis” in order to legitimize the violence. There is no longer a common refrain to be hummed between these lines. In this conflict, even the language of peace and compassion has been poisoned by hatred.

The front line itself has shifted to pixels and drones. The International Committee of the Red Cross warns that “modern front lines now extend into both physical and digital space,” as drones, artificial intelligence, and cyber operations are transforming warfare. Personal contact has given way to camera lenses. In 2025, the death of a civilian becomes just another file in a vast ocean of information. Indeed, the barrage of information numbs the senses, and the death of a child passes as just another “sound clip” or video on social media. Where even French and German soldiers once exchanged an awkward smile during a Christmas truce, today what reaches us is fragmented, mediated, and hardly human.

 

 

“Modern war reporting, therefore operates in a fragmented information environment where meaning, identity, and emotions circulate faster than verification. Algorithms reward outrage, not restraint. Peace rarely gains visibility unless it becomes a controversy. A truce moment is ambiguous, slow, and emotionally complex, which makes it algorithmically fragile. Today, we have mass and social media, instant and individualised communication, deep identity insecurity driven by global polycrisis, and the erosion of shared ideological frameworks that once helped communities interpret events collectively.”  Prof. Tripelly says.

 

This year, there will be no choir of soldiers singing Stille Nacht on the front lines of the war. But perhaps we can still listen to a quieter form of solidarity. Instead of literal camaraderie, what remains is shared testimony, the human act of telling the truth in the face of war. To conclude where we began, with a cinematic memory, one scene remains instructive. In Joyeux Noël, the film that most vividly captures the spirit of the Christmas Truce of 1914, this very true and human mythology begins with sound, when a German soldier, a tenor, emerges from the trench and sings a Christmas carol in his language, inspiring his fellow soldiers around him. Then, unexpectedly, a Scottish soldier responds with the voice of the bagpipes. And then comes the bravest act of all, the tenor that steps out of the trench and walks toward no man’s land, exposed, singing in Latin to the accompaniment of the bagpipes — Adeste Fideles, O Come All Ye Faithful.

Latin, a language that belonged to no one nation yet carried a shared spiritual heritage, became the common ground. Not victory, not ideology, not flags, but a common hope, expressed in a language that belonged to everyone and no one at the same time. This fragile harmony did not end the war, but for a moment it suspended its logic. Who knows, if something like that could happen today. Yet, the scene endures, reminding us that even when peace seems impossible, humanity survives in the most basic of shared experiences: the memory of home, the warmth of family, and the fear of not returning. Eventually, the most radical act left to us is, if not to sing together, then to remember that once — even if only for a moment — people did, and that it may yet happen again.

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