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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Debliney chalk Reboarding, and it's December,

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Speaker 1: so tis the season for a holiday podcast special. And

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Speaker 1: I always like to do some kind of episode to

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Speaker 1: mark the season, but I usually try to pick something

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Speaker 1: that's a little bit offbeat. A couple of years ago,

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Speaker 1: Katie and I went for a Saturnalia celebration, which was

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Speaker 1: really fun. Imagine frenzy clapping of hands, the King of

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Speaker 1: the Beans. Last year we were kind of off beat too,

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Speaker 1: aren't we. We did. We covered that scrooge like tale

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Speaker 1: of Oliver Cromwell, he who canceled Christmas, plus some some

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Speaker 1: New England Puritan action too in there. But this year

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Speaker 1: we've chosen something that is a bit more somber, a

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Speaker 1: bit more serious, but also in my opinion, more moving

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Speaker 1: to the spunt annius Christmas Eve truth that broke out

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Speaker 1: along the Western Front during World War One, and it

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Speaker 1: of course took place in the first months of a

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Speaker 1: year's long war, and it was never repeated after the

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Speaker 1: first winter, so you really can look at it as

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Speaker 1: an isolated event very early in the war. But as

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Speaker 1: Christmas nineteen fourteen approached, many men who had been sniping

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Speaker 1: and shelling each other just hours before, set aside their weapons,

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Speaker 1: sang carols together, decorated trees, and traded corned beef and

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Speaker 1: cigarettes for beer and schnops. It's kind of a remarkable story.

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Speaker 1: It sounds so unbelievable. In fact, many folks think it's

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Speaker 1: an urban legend. It even has a snoop's entry, if

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Speaker 1: that tells you something, the real mark of a possible

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Speaker 1: urban legend, right. Others think, yes, it's true, but way overblown.

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Speaker 1: That only a few soldiers and certainly no officers frattinized

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Speaker 1: on the front, but actually soldiers of all ranks stationed

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Speaker 1: in sectors ofss the front called local truces for as

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Speaker 1: little as a few hours or as long as two weeks.

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Speaker 1: So how did a truce like this come about in

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Speaker 1: the first place? How do you walk out into no

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Speaker 1: man's land between the trenches and propose a friendly exchange

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Speaker 1: of schnops or buttons? How? Indeed? So, first, a little

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Speaker 1: background on the early months of the war. World War

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Speaker 1: One started in July nineteen fourteen, and in the first

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Speaker 1: month the Germans raced through Belgium on their way to France,

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Speaker 1: and they were finally halted in September at the first

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Speaker 1: Battle of the Marner, I should say slowed down, and

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Speaker 1: this began a stalemate, the real digging in of heels,

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Speaker 1: the trench warfare, where victory meant moving your line up

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Speaker 1: just a few yards, you know, the way that we

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Speaker 1: imagine World War One. It's not a war where people

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Speaker 1: are zipping around across Europe really quickly. So four hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy five miles of trenches were established from the

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Speaker 1: North Sea to Switzerland. That was the Western Front, and

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Speaker 1: enemy troops that the front lines were, of course often

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Speaker 1: very close to each other, I mean like physically just

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Speaker 1: a few yards away from each other. So such close

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Speaker 1: quarters created these natural limited truces in some of the

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Speaker 1: quieter spots where each side would tacitly agree not to

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Speaker 1: shoot down the opposing rations parties with sniper fire. Since

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Speaker 1: it was early in the war, some still also followed

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Speaker 1: the idea of fair play, like breaking for breakfast hour.

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Speaker 1: It seemed natural then that if you could break for breakfast,

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Speaker 1: maybe you could also break for Christmas. But that idea

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Speaker 1: was totally unlikely on a high level. Pope Benedict, the

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Speaker 1: fifteenths call for Christmas Truths was pretty much ignored by

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Speaker 1: political leaders across Europe. Some senior military even preemptively planned

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Speaker 1: against possible white flags flown on Christmas. On December twenty,

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Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill,

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Speaker 1: messaged the Royal Navy that quote, any white flag hoisted

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Speaker 1: by a German ship is to be fired on as

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Speaker 1: a matter of principle. They were convinced that the Germans

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Speaker 1: would use the white flag as a trick, and I

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Speaker 1: didn't want any funny business. I would suspect that too,

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Speaker 1: so you would you would probably not be participating in

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Speaker 1: cynical I mean, it is war, maybe just cautious. So

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Speaker 1: for many soldiers to the idea of marking Christmas in

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Speaker 1: any way during war seemed inconceivable. Even in nineteen fourteen.

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Speaker 1: For instance, German officer Captain Rudolph Binding, who had just

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Speaker 1: come out of the First Battle of Epra, called the

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Speaker 1: Massacre of Innocence in Germany due to the huge number

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Speaker 1: of very young, very inexperienced soldiers who were killed there,

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Speaker 1: wrote to his father on December twenty of his thoughts

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Speaker 1: on Christmas at the front, he wrote, quote the simplicity

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Speaker 1: of Christmas, with the laughter of children, surprises, the joy

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Speaker 1: of giving little things. This is as it should be

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Speaker 1: when it appears alone. But when it enters the lists

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Speaker 1: with a war, it is out of place. Enemy death

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Speaker 1: and a Christmas tree. They cannot live so close together.

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Speaker 1: The guys are clearly thought otherwise. Though, while none of

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Speaker 1: the wartime rule or thought it proper to suspend fighting

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Speaker 1: on Christmas, they did think small gifts for the troops

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Speaker 1: were appropriate. King George the Fifth and Queen Mary had

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Speaker 1: cards and tins of extra rations and putting sent to

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Speaker 1: British troops, for example, and the Kaiser had cigars and

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Speaker 1: tiny Christmas trees shipped to the front lines, complete with

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Speaker 1: ready to light candles. I think I'd like a Christmas

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Speaker 1: tree better than a tinned pudding. Yeah, that doesn't send.

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Speaker 1: It hasn't tried one, so what do I know. But

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Speaker 1: it's these barter ready goods puddings or cigars whatever, and

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Speaker 1: the cheery trees, and the tendency of both British and

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Speaker 1: German people to sing that started the truth in most

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Speaker 1: sectors where it occurred so we'll give you a few

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Speaker 1: accounts of how it went down, because of course it

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Speaker 1: is scattered across this huge western front. But in one case,

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Speaker 1: a British century near Laventi, France spotted a group of

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Speaker 1: Saxon's on December twenty three, and they were up on

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Speaker 1: top of their trench parapet, but they didn't look very scary.

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Speaker 1: They were goofing off. One guy was juggling, and uh,

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Speaker 1: some of them were waving the Brits over in a

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Speaker 1: friendly way, not like a mocking way. Um. The British

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Speaker 1: officer in charge thought this was really sketchy, really potentially dangerous,

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Speaker 1: and Warren his troops just basically don't mess with that

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Speaker 1: because inviting them over they might be trying to see

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Speaker 1: what our trenches look like. Nobo could be a trick.

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Speaker 1: But the next day, on Christmas Eve, there was ultimately

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Speaker 1: this cautious exchange between the Germans and the Brits of

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Speaker 1: cigars and beer, and the German side for cigarettes and

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Speaker 1: corned beef on the British side, which was called bully beef.

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Speaker 1: It was kind of detested by the soldiers even at

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Speaker 1: this point, so they were probably willing to make that trade.

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Speaker 1: And then English newspapers, to which I think that's interesting

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Speaker 1: that the German soldiers would be coveting the English news.

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Speaker 1: At dusk of the Germans again climbed their parapets, but

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Speaker 1: this time it was too light Christmas trees, and at

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Speaker 1: eleven pm they started singing still Enough, which is of

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Speaker 1: course silent night Christmas Day, with the mud all covered

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Speaker 1: and hardened by deep freeze and a sky bright and blue.

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Speaker 1: Both sides came out again to exchange gifts and also

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Speaker 1: this is what I found surprising names and addresses, and

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Speaker 1: they promised to write or visit after the war them

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Speaker 1: apparently did I mean, It's years later, but they did

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Speaker 1: maintain those friendships in the relationship. And there was also

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Speaker 1: an impromptu soccer game which ended with a recorded Saxon

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Speaker 1: victory over the Lancashire few stillers. So there you go.

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Speaker 1: They were they were trying to enjoy themselves in the

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Speaker 1: middle of this. But across the front similar episodes played out.

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Speaker 1: For instance, rifleman Ernest Morley of the sixteenth Battalion, London

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Speaker 1: Regiment wrote how things started in his sector. He said, quote,

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Speaker 1: we had decided to give the Germans a Christmas present

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Speaker 1: of three carols and five rounds. Rapid accordingly, as soon

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Speaker 1: as night fell we started, and the strains of white

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Speaker 1: shepherds arose upon the air. We finished that and paused

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Speaker 1: preparatory to give the second item on the program. But

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Speaker 1: low we heard answering strains arising from their lines. One

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Speaker 1: of them shouted a Merry Christmas, English, we're not shooting tonight.

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Speaker 1: German Lieutenant Johannes Niemann wrote of the decoration, saying, quote,

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Speaker 1: our soldiers had hung little Christmas trees covered with candles

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Speaker 1: above the trenches, and British Sergeant A. Level wrote quote,

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Speaker 1: I shall remember to my dying day right along the

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Speaker 1: whole line where hung paper lanterns and illuminations of every description.

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Speaker 1: And I keep imagining the terrible image you have of

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Speaker 1: World War One trenches with trees that are just completely decimated,

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Speaker 1: villages decimated, mud and bodies everywhere, and little Christmas trees

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Speaker 1: and lanterns strung around it. It really um It paints

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Speaker 1: quite a picture if you try to imagine that. But

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Speaker 1: Private Albert Moren described hearing the Christmas Eve carols as

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Speaker 1: quote one of the highlights of my life. So you

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Speaker 1: can imagine that it did have this really huge effect

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Speaker 1: on these men who had just seeing carnage day after

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Speaker 1: day or boredom, experiencing boredom to have something so pleasant

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Speaker 1: and so out of the ordinary occur. And on Christmas

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Speaker 1: Day the truce continued in many of the places, with

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Speaker 1: more games and gift exchanges and singing and combined religious services,

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Speaker 1: and uh soldiers would swap gear, you know, like switch

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Speaker 1: hats or let me trade for your German coat for

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Speaker 1: my British coat or something, and take pictures together, kind

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Speaker 1: of like just dressing up in costumes almost. And there

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Speaker 1: was also, of course the very somber task of burying

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Speaker 1: the dead, some of whom had been lying out there

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Speaker 1: in No Man's Land, where, of course, as the name implies,

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Speaker 1: nobody could go collect them for weeks or even months. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting to note that while the French and

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Speaker 1: Belgians didn't really participate in the Christmas Truths in the

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Speaker 1: same way that some British did, they might have had

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Speaker 1: harder feelings against the Germans. Obviously, some did arrange a

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Speaker 1: temporary Christmas armistice solely for the purpose of burying the dead,

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Speaker 1: so they carry each other's men's to the Middle exchange

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Speaker 1: and shake hands, so something that was a lot more somber,

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Speaker 1: a lot more official. Just let's agree to take care

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Speaker 1: of this important task and not celebrate, right, no singing

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Speaker 1: of carols with that. Another truce oddity was the exchange

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Speaker 1: of insignia, buttons, scraps of cloth, and best of all,

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Speaker 1: pickle helves. The German dress helmet. So those are the

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Speaker 1: helmets with the little spikes on top, and I can

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Speaker 1: imagine why you might want one as a as a souvenir.

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Speaker 1: But there's one story from the London Rifle Brigade written

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Speaker 1: up in a History Today article by John Terrain that

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Speaker 1: tells of a German soldier who had traded away his

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Speaker 1: dress helmet, and the day after Christmas, he calls out

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Speaker 1: to speak to a British officer and they meet up

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Speaker 1: in No Man's Land and the German explained that he

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Speaker 1: had traded his helmet the day before, and he had

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Speaker 1: a grand inspection the next day, so he really kind

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Speaker 1: of needed to borrow it back. He apparently borrowed it,

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Speaker 1: must have used it for his inspection in a satisfactory manner,

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Speaker 1: and then did return it in exchange for a little

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Speaker 1: more bully beef because that was hot stuff in the

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Speaker 1: German trenches. Another famous incident has a British soldier recognizing

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Speaker 1: his German barber from London and getting a trim in

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Speaker 1: the middle of No Man's Land. And that's actually not

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Speaker 1: quite as unlikely as it may sound to some people.

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Speaker 1: Many Germans had worked in pre war England, so I

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Speaker 1: might have known each other. And there's another example of

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Speaker 1: a soldier in the British Hampshire Regiment who described the

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Speaker 1: area between the trenches as just a mass of gray

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Speaker 1: and khaki. And those are of course the two sides

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Speaker 1: uniforms and um. That helped me also imagine what this

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Speaker 1: looked like. I can imagine the Christmas Eve with the

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Speaker 1: light strung up in the Christmas trees and all of that,

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Speaker 1: but to imagine Christmas Day just all of these guys

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Speaker 1: kind of seeing each other for the first time. In

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Speaker 1: many cases because they had been fighting trench warfare, fighting

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Speaker 1: at night for so long, a lot of them had

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Speaker 1: never seen the enemy really and they probably and in

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Speaker 1: in some documented cases, didn't make realizations about each other that, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, the Germans weren't barbarians, the British weren't these

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Speaker 1: stubborn clods or something, you know, these um stereotypes, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: stereotypes that they had about the opposing side, and that

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Speaker 1: had really been indoctrinated in them too. Still though, in

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Speaker 1: a lot of the British letters and diaries that describe

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Speaker 1: the Truth, you'll find the British distinguishing between the men

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Speaker 1: that they were fraternizing with. They were Saxons and Bavarians,

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Speaker 1: they were not Prussians. That seemed a very important distinguished

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Speaker 1: for them to make, and I thought it was it

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Speaker 1: was really strange that the German troops themselves even would

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Speaker 1: sometimes dissociate themselves from the Prussians. In one case, there

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Speaker 1: was a member of the Dublin feast Laers who was

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Speaker 1: killed during the Truth by a stray bullet, and that

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Speaker 1: sounds like the kind of thing that would shut down

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Speaker 1: a truth immediately. But the Sacs and troops sent over

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Speaker 1: an apology and it said, quote it must have been

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Speaker 1: one of those damned Prussians exclamation point, and followed up

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Speaker 1: the apology with two barrels of beer. That was just

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Speaker 1: so surprising to me that a truce could continue, and

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Speaker 1: that you would differentiate among your your ranks like that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that the one bullet would immediately started fighting again,

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Speaker 1: that the guy's buddies would just kind of get over

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Speaker 1: it or something. But um, you can imagine how in

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Speaker 1: some cases incidents like that would definitely bring the truth

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Speaker 1: to an end. And the truces did only last hours

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Speaker 1: in certain sectors, with some troops refusing to participate at all,

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Speaker 1: and others that stretched as long as January tent While

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Speaker 1: the truces were usually arranged by bold or brave bands

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Speaker 1: of soldiers, with officers having nothing else to do but

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Speaker 1: go along with it after their men began pouring into

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Speaker 1: no man's land, sometimes the officers made the arrangements themselves.

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Speaker 1: Captain Robert Hamilton's of the first of the killion Royal

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Speaker 1: Warwickshire Regiment station near Saint yvan Belgium, met with the

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Speaker 1: German officer halfway through no man's land. They shook hands

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Speaker 1: and arranged a forty eight hour truce. In his journal

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Speaker 1: he talked about doubling midnight centuries just for good measure,

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Speaker 1: but also notes quote, I am told the general and

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Speaker 1: staff are furious but powerless to stop it. I think

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Speaker 1: you would have been on the midnight century. You're suspicious

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Speaker 1: that this whole thing. But of course high ranking officers

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Speaker 1: on both sides were totally aghast at what was happening.

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Speaker 1: They thought is simply postponing the conclusion of a war

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Speaker 1: that had already gone on longer than expected, and for instance,

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Speaker 1: the British general Sir Horace Smith Dorian threatened disciplinary action

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Speaker 1: against any officers who fraternized with the enemy, even though

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Speaker 1: there aren't records of punishments actually being dolled out. But

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Speaker 1: by the end of January um with the war escalating,

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Speaker 1: of course, the death penalty was announced for what would

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Speaker 1: be considered high reason. So it's not Christmas anymore, it

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Speaker 1: is um treason against your country. On the German side,

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Speaker 1: officers were threatened, uh, we're officers threatened soldiers with a

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Speaker 1: transfer to the Russian front, which does sound like it

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Speaker 1: would make you give up on your button collection pretty quickly.

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Speaker 1: Not that some truce participants didn't skirt authority for as

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Speaker 1: long as they could get away with it, though British

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Speaker 1: General Sir Henry Rawlinson wrote in his diary quote a

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Speaker 1: German shouted out to our men, quote, lookout, we have

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Speaker 1: a general coming, so we have to fire at you,

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Speaker 1: but will aim high you do the same for us.

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Speaker 1: I find that pretty pretty remarkable that again the trust

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Speaker 1: here is the trust and the willingness to just play war,

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Speaker 1: not just like we are openly and defiance of we're

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Speaker 1: having this truce, but we're going to just pretend like

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Speaker 1: we're fighting. We won't really try to hurt you. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's another example of that from Lieutenant Michael Holroyd, who

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Speaker 1: was a British machine gun officer in the first Battalian

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Speaker 1: Hampshire Regiment, and he told his parents that around New

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Speaker 1: Year's when the truce was still going on, the Germans

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Speaker 1: threw up a red light and cried out, put your

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Speaker 1: heads down before shelling them. After it ended, a white

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Speaker 1: light came up and they yelled, all right, Hampshire's our

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Speaker 1: officers are gone now, so putting putting on a show

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Speaker 1: for the guys in charge. In contrary to popular belief,

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Speaker 1: the press also celebrated the truce. News reached England by

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Speaker 1: the New Year, and the Illustrated London News showed a

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Speaker 1: single Saxon soldier delivering a candlelit tree to the British.

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Speaker 1: It was captioned the Light of Peace and the trenches

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Speaker 1: on Christmas Eve, so what was going on here and

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Speaker 1: what did it mean? I mean, did the truce mean anything?

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Speaker 1: Coming as it did at the beginning of a very long,

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Speaker 1: very terrible war. I mean, we talked about the chemical

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Speaker 1: warfare pretty recently in an episode. We know how bad

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Speaker 1: it is, and there were many cases of Christmas armistice,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't everywhere. We should emphasize that point. Some

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Speaker 1: soldiers on the front were shocked to hear of what happened,

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Speaker 1: because they spent their night fighting just like they normally did.

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Speaker 1: For instance, Captain jail Jack of the First Cameroonians recorded

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Speaker 1: shelling and sniping mixed with a little German caroling, which

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Speaker 1: the British did not respond to, and even the truce

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Speaker 1: that was didn't continue beyond nineteen fourteen. By nineteen sixteen,

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Speaker 1: Sergeant p Hair of the eleventh Royal Feusalaers wrote to

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Speaker 1: his mother, quote, there is very little here to remind

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Speaker 1: us of Christmas, just a handful of us remembering that

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Speaker 1: it is December. We are not dispirited, nor do we

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Speaker 1: feel downcast at the fact that we should be spending

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Speaker 1: such a great day like this. It's not a truce,

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Speaker 1: but just some sort of strange understanding between us and

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Speaker 1: the Jerry's on the other side, that Christmas Day should

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Speaker 1: be like this. Perhaps next Christmas the war will be over.

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Speaker 1: He was killed two months later. That's so sad, But

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Speaker 1: even in nineteen fourteen, it's unlikely that many of the

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Speaker 1: participants really thought that any kind of international peace would

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Speaker 1: come from the truth. Troops on both sides didn't want

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Speaker 1: to lose just for the sake of you know, just

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Speaker 1: because you were making friends with a guy on the

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Speaker 1: other side, getting his address, trading for his cool looking hat,

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Speaker 1: didn't mean that you wanted your country to give up

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Speaker 1: or something. Bruce Barn's father, who was a famous cartoonist

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Speaker 1: and a machine gun officer with the Captain Hamiltons who

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Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, the guy who walked out to meet

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Speaker 1: his German counterpart. He saw it as quote, an interval

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Speaker 1: between the rounds in a friendly boxing match, and I

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Speaker 1: have to imagine that for a lot of guys, they

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Speaker 1: would be like that something to to get away, as

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Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, from that day to day probably really

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Speaker 1: boring and sometimes really scary existence. Yeah, it's funny to

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Speaker 1: bring up that comparison to sports though, because that whole

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Speaker 1: exchange of gear. Thing did make me think a lot

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Speaker 1: of like international soccer matches that you watch when afterwards

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Speaker 1: they'll exchange jerseys and the whole playing fighting instead of fighting.

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Speaker 1: Your soccer perspective coming in here. Um, But clearly the

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Speaker 1: perception of war was something so sporting as a boxing

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Speaker 1: match would change later. Some historians would see it as

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Speaker 1: kind of a bridge between the pre war and the

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Speaker 1: post war world. Contributing to the PBS series on the

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Speaker 1: Great War, Paul Fusil describes it as the quote last

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Speaker 1: gesture of the nineteenth century idea that human beings are

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Speaker 1: getting better the longer the human race goes on. Nobody

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Speaker 1: could believe that after the First World War, and certainly

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Speaker 1: not after the second. And to go along with that

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Speaker 1: idea almost I mean, some people consider it the last

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Speaker 1: holdout of like a Victorian Christmas, and and that makes

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Speaker 1: sense or Dickens Christmas, I mean kind of the same thing.

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Speaker 1: But that makes sense if you think that the origin

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Speaker 1: of a Victorian Christmas, which is from Britain, is of

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Speaker 1: course German because of Prince Albert. As we've talked about

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Speaker 1: all that before too, so it makes sense that the

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Speaker 1: two countries in particular would have such similar Christmas traditions

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Speaker 1: and and um end up celebrating them in this early

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Speaker 1: stage of the war together. But I was really surprised.

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Speaker 1: I know we've had a lot of quotes in this

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Speaker 1: episode because there are so many letters and diaries written

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Speaker 1: by soldiers, but we do have a quote from our

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Speaker 1: old friend Arthur Conan Doyle, who is really the new

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Speaker 1: Queen Victoria up in every episode. I really like what

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Speaker 1: how he described the truth, though it's quite poignant. He

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Speaker 1: wrote it was quote one human episode amid all the

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Speaker 1: atrocities which have stained the memory of the war. UM

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Speaker 1: and clearly it has been really well remembered and celebrated

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Speaker 1: because it is so unique. It is this one human episode.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if it had ended the war or something,

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Speaker 1: it would clearly be in a whole different league of history.

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Speaker 1: But it's so unusual that a lot of people have

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Speaker 1: remembered it and have marked it in existence. Members of

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Speaker 1: the Association for Military Remembrance reenact the Truce at Apra

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Speaker 1: and in November two thousand five, the last known Christmas

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Speaker 1: Truce veteran died in Scotland at a wopping one hundred

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Speaker 1: and nine years old. His name was Alfred Anderson. He

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Speaker 1: was a Black Watch soldier and he was eighteen and

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Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen. Later in the war, he had served as

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Speaker 1: a batman to the brother of the late Queen Mother

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Speaker 1: and consequently had received a visit from Prince Charles and

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Speaker 1: numerous telegrams from the Queen. I feel like we should

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Speaker 1: explain batman really quickly too, because the batman UM. I

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Speaker 1: found out about this from watching Downton Abbey. UM. It's

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Speaker 1: like the personal assistant almost of high ranking officers. So

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Speaker 1: the job would be anything from like getting your messages,

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Speaker 1: making sure you had your supplies, to offering some kind

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Speaker 1: of personal protection. And it was a really prestigious position

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Speaker 1: to have. You might get to go to a better

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Speaker 1: place is and move up faster in the army. UM.

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Speaker 1: So that was I was also kind of surprised that

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Speaker 1: this fellow, Alfred Anderson UM, died in two thousand five.

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Speaker 1: I believe that the last World War One survivor died

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Speaker 1: just this year, so not too not too far apart,

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Speaker 1: not too far for the last Christmas Truth survivor. UM.

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Speaker 1: But one final comment here on Bruce Bearn's father, who

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Speaker 1: he mentioned earlier. I looked at some of his cartoons,

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Speaker 1: and I kind of thought they were a neat way

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Speaker 1: to take a different look at World War One, one

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Speaker 1: that is personal, one that's sometimes humorous instead of remote

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Speaker 1: and upsetting and mechanical. You know, it's it's clearly depicting

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Speaker 1: the soldiers not just as cannon fodder. There are people,

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Speaker 1: and they do funny things, and they have funny reaction.

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Speaker 1: They were funny interactions with people. But I also liked

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Speaker 1: Beren's father's reflection on the truth, and they certainly suggest

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Speaker 1: that he may have seen it as more than just

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Speaker 1: a lull in a friendly boxing match. As we mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 1: he wrote quote, there was a kind of invisible and

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Speaker 1: tangible feeling extending across the frozen swamp between the two lines,

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Speaker 1: which said, this is Christmas Eve for both of us,

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Speaker 1: something in common. Well, that was a great choice for

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Speaker 1: a Christmas episode, I think, Well, I'm glad that you

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Speaker 1: liked it, and I really enjoyed listening to it. It

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Speaker 1: made me break out my family. Carol's book kind of

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Speaker 1: put me in a in a Christmas move but a

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Speaker 1: reflective one too, And I know that there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of other Christmas themed episodes that people want to

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Speaker 1: hear I think people request sat Nick every single year

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Speaker 1: people do. We get a lot of requests for sat Nick,

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Speaker 1: So maybe that will be next year's episode. Maybe. But

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Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you have any more requests Christmas

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Speaker 1: related or not, please email us or a history podcast

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Speaker 1: at how Stuff works dot com. You can also hit

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Speaker 1: us up on Facebook or on Twitter at mist in History.

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Speaker 1: And of course have a very merry Christmas and a

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Speaker 1: happy Hanukah, Kwanza, Happy New Year, Best of festivals Saturnalia,

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Speaker 1: of course christ Tide. If you listen into our old

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Speaker 1: episodes you will know both of those references. Whatever holiday

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Speaker 1: you celebrate, I hope you have a happy and peaceful season.

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Speaker 1: You can also learn more about Christmas as well as

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Speaker 1: the Christmas Truths. We do have an article on that.

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Speaker 1: I found it unfortunately after I was done researching this episode,

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Speaker 1: because I'm rarely expecting we have uncovered history articles anymore.

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Speaker 1: We usually don't. We usually don't, but we do have

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Speaker 1: one for this It's called what was the Christmas Troops?

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Speaker 1: And we have How Christmas Works, which I always like

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Speaker 1: to recommend. You can check it out by searching for

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