It's easy to forget, while we're all enjoying the largesse of the holidays, exchanging gifts and eating rich food and enjoying the company of our friends and loved ones, that there's not one, but two wars in which our country is deeply embroiled.  I had forgotten myself until I got to the airport on December 20th to visit my old home town, and saw how many military personnel were in the airport ready to do the same.  There were so many of them, and all so young:  most of them were just exiting basic training, and spending one last holiday with their families before they got their deployment orders and shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan, where they will risk their lives daily in service of a conflict whose purpose becomes murkier with every passing day.  It reminded me of the penultimate film I'd watched for the Screengrab 12 Days of Christmas Marathon:  Joyeux Noel.

The background of  Christian Carion's 2005 film is an odd but inspiring bit of World War I history:  on Christmas Eve of 1914, German soldiers celebrated the holiday by placing little candles and miniature Christmas trees along the edges of the trenches in which they'd toiled and died since the war began.  A few began singing Christmas carols in their native language.  More or less spontaneously, they were joined by regiments of Scotsmen and Frenchmen, who at first sang along or favored the enemy with their own carols, and later made the brave -- or foolhardy -- gesture of actually leaving the trenches to meet their opposite numbers in No Man's Land.  Precious rations and luxury items were exchanged as gifts; stories were told and songs were sung by those who shared a language.

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