One account mentions a British soldier having his hair cut by his pre-war German barber another talks of a pig-roast. The phenomenon took different forms across the Western front.

The Christmas truce also allowed both sides to finally bury their dead comrades, whose bodies had lain for weeks on вЂњno manвЂ™s land,вЂќ the ground between opposing trenches. In others, Germans held up signs reading вЂњYou no shoot, we no shoot.вЂќ Over the course of the day, troops exchanged gifts of cigarettes, food, buttons and hats. Allied soldiers came out warily to greet them. The next morning, in some places, German soldiers emerged from their trenches, calling out вЂњMerry ChristmasвЂќ in English. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing ВвЂ“ two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.вЂќ вЂњFirst the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up вЂO Come, All Ye FaithfulвЂ™ the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade described it in even greater detail: Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment recalled, in a document later rounded up by the New York Times. Most accounts suggest the truce began with carol singing from the trenches on Christmas Eve, вЂњa beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhereвЂќ, as Pvt. Nevertheless, some two-thirds of troops - about 100,000 people - are believed to have participated in the legendary truce. To this day historians continue to disagree over the specifics: no one knows where it began or how it spread, or if, by some curious festive magic, it broke out simultaneously across the trenches. A huge range of differing oral accounts, diary entries and letters home from those who took part make it virtually impossible to speak of a вЂњtypicalвЂќ Christmas truce as it took place across the Western front. Yet it seems the sheer misery of daily life in the cold, wet, dull trenches was enough to motivate troops to initiate the truce on their own - which means that itвЂ™s hard to pin down exactly what happened. Pope Benedict XV, who took office that September, had originally called for a Christmas truce, an idea that was officially rejected. But what actually happened on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 1914 - and did they really play soccer on the battlefield? In the hundred years since, the event has been seen as a kind of miracle, a rare moment of peace just a few months into a war that would eventually claim over 15 million lives. On a crisp, clear morning 100 years ago, thousands of British, Belgian and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of their trenches and spent Christmas mingling with their German enemies along the Western front.

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