{"id":705,"date":"2019-12-18T13:16:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T19:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/?p=705"},"modified":"2019-12-18T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T19:22:22","slug":"advent-calendar-18-christmas-truce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/18\/advent-calendar-18-christmas-truce\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent calendar #18: Christmas Truce"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I know, we&#8217;re still a week out from Christmas itself. But this is what I&#8217;m in the mood to post: a clip from the film <em>Joyeux Noel<\/em>, which if you haven&#8217;t seen it, never mind this and go watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube alignright wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-cSrqRdlFeo?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The Christmas Truce of 1914 is an event that has always fascinated me. And no doubt the power of this story fed into my imagination when I was conceiving the funeral sequence in <em>Ryswyck<\/em>. It&#8217;s obvious that the powers who prosecute wars don&#8217;t trust to the discipline of soldiers to recognize the humanity of their enemy &#8212; and kill them anyway. And possibly they are correct: it&#8217;s a very short hop from &#8220;I don&#8217;t like to kill you but I&#8217;m going to do it for my country&#8217;s sake&#8221; to &#8220;Why were we doing this, again?&#8221; Much easier to convince people that they are fighting to exterminate subhuman vermin who can&#8217;t encompass the complex conscience (in French that word has a happy dual meaning of both &#8220;conscience&#8221; and &#8220;consciousness&#8221;) that they themselves enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, I can&#8217;t think of anything more soul-corroding than to take on board a view of other humans (in groups or individually) as either degraded figures compared to yourself, or else non-player characters to whom you can do anything you like and the meaning it has for <em>you <\/em>is the sole meaning it has altogether. And I think part of what makes the spectacle of sexism or racism or what-have-you so maddening is just that sight of people trying to rescue their own vision of themselves by doing exactly that harm which will thwart their own hopes. (Not that I care about the fate of sexists and racists more than that of the people they harm, but you&#8217;d think some net <em>good <\/em>would come of it, and it&#8217;s exactly the opposite.) As C.S. Lewis pointed out, hurting someone increases your resentment against them, rather than discharging it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But <em>to cast down the mighty from their thrones, and to lift up the lowly<\/em> is good news for the mighty too. We need more Christmas Truces to make that clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know, we&#8217;re still a week out from Christmas itself. But this is what I&#8217;m in the mood to post: a clip from the film Joyeux Noel, which if you haven&#8217;t seen it, never mind this and go watch. The Christmas Truce of 1914 is an event that has always fascinated me. And no doubt<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/18\/advent-calendar-18-christmas-truce\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More&nbsp;<i class=\"fas fa-long-arrow-alt-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p><!-- entry-read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"Advent calendar #18: Christmas Truce\nIn which I muse on how casting down the mighty from their thrones is the true Christmas spirit. #authorblogging #adventcalendar","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[16,129,147,27],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/payFy4-bn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":708,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}