Article December 25, 2000 Issue

JOY to the world

Christmas carols have a particular healing power.

By Dorothy Maubane

Over the years, Christmas carols have shown a profound power to bring harmony and peace.

An issue of Reader's Digest carried a story about how soldiers during World War I responded to the carol "Silent Night." At Christmas in 1914 there was a truce along the trenches on the Western front. German soldiers began to sing "Silent Night," and soon were joined by British voices on the other side. What an example of how even "enemies" could come together in song.

Also during World War I, "Silent Night"—sung by German, Austrian, and Hungarian prisoners in a Siberian prison camp—touched the commandant's heart. With tears in his eyes, the Russian commandant told his prisoners in broken German, "Tonight is the first time in more than a year of war that I have been able to forget that you and I are supposed to be enemies."

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