Christmas is my favorite holiday. There is just something about the magic of the lights, the gleam of excitement in a child’s eyes, the sweet photos of children with Santa, and so much more. Its the time of year when the gifts of joy, peace, miracles, and love are manifest. All of which can and do bring about changes to the hardest of hearts. Even the grumpiest, unhappiest of men after a night of reckoning are shown that Joy and Goodwill towards all bring the richest of dividends: family and friends, and love.

Miracles happen in the most unexpected places even during the heat of battle. All was quiet on the Western front that Christmas Eve of 1914 when a British sentry noticed something very unexpected.

Warned that it might be a trap, Brewer slowly raised his head over the soaked sandbags protecting his position and through the maze of barbed wire saw a sparkling Christmas tree. As the lieutenant gazed down the line of the German trenches, a whole string of small conifers glimmered like beads on a necklace.

Brewer then noticed the rising of a faint sound that he had never before heard on the battlefield—a Christmas carol. The German words to “Stille Nacht” were not familiar, but the tune—“Silent Night”—certainly was. When the German soldiers finished singing, their foes broke out in cheers. Used to returning fire, the British now replied in song with the English version of the carol.

Can you just imagine? From one side of a war-torn battlefield to another voices, normally enemies during battle, united in song to sing one of the most beautiful Christmas hymns ever.