The View from Here - St, Mary's Church Adderbury 5th December 2014

Our Church was all aglow with the reflected light and warmth from the encircling collection of St. Mary's Christmas Trees gloriously dressed and garlanded  for this Festival weekend and the gathered congregation chatted amicably as we waited for folks to stop looking at the Christmas trees and for the performance to begin.

Donald McCombie's story - WWI Remembered "The Story of the Dancer" is a fictitious tale based on the 1914 Christmas truce when opposing soldiers and officers broke ranks across No Mans Land, greeting each other with gifts of food and cigarettes, played a game of football and sang Christmas carols.  The 1914 truce provided a brief  respite of hostilities for the forces actively engaged in fighting in various places like Ypres, Belgium and "particularly in Saint-Yvon, known as Saint-Yvon, in Plugstreet/Ploegsteert Comines-Warneton)."

We were entertained to a wonderful evening's performance by Adderbury Village Morris Men of word, song, music and dance and we eagerly joined in with their carol singing, tremendously applauding their efforts.

It was a brilliant evening.....and here are a few photo shots of the evening....

Here is my own tribute to this 1914 Christmas Truce, published in 2009...

Christmas in the Trenches

Christmas came once to that war torn world
In Flanders' Trenches where battle held sway
And soldiers stopped fighting
Broke ranks became men
Sang favoured carols
In that mud hell on earth
Stood together shared rations
Men and Officers, theirs and ours
All ranks together
A brief respite from hostilities
Hankered after longed for pastimes
Found a football, gamely played
In teams in the mud
Fought together for a friendship
To counter that awfulness of living


Margaret Halstead


My thanks for the quotation regarding "Plugstreet/Ploegsteert" which comes from Wikipedia.