I remember so clearly seeing the movie Titanic in the theater and the sinking feeling that something bad was going to happen.  We had been sitting near the front, and theaters slope down, so after the movie I felt like clawing my way through the crowd just to get out.

It was an epic film about an epic tragedy and a huge hit. At the time, it became the top box office movie because it so effectively bound the tragic story of that ship to the love story of Jack and Rose.  We felt the breaking and sinking of the ship, which broke and sunk so many lives, so many futures.  

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Some years ago I met a little boy in Honduras named Carlos. He was an orphan and had been recently brought to El Hogar, a school for orphans and desperately poor children. There were two things I noticed immediately about Carlos.  First, he was a very serious young man. When I spoke to him, I could tell he was measuring me up. He was 6, a first grader, and he was measuring me up! The second thing I noticed was that his left eye looked perpetually inward, so you had to focus on his right eye.

Otherwise, Carlos was doing fine. He did well in school and got along with the other kids. He seemed fine. I’ve known a number of people who had an eye turning a different way so I didn’t think much more about it.

I went back the next year and saw Carlos again. He was still doing well. He didn’t size me up quite as much because he remembered me. And I was happy to see that his left eye was moving in tandem with his right eye. I asked one of the staff about it and they told me he had had surgery to reattach the muscle that controlled his eye.

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On Christmas Eve 1914, a famous and wondrous moment happened. World War I, or as they called it at the time the Great War, had consumed Europe for about five months. On what would be known as the Western Front, England, France and Germany settled into about 1500 miles of trenches winding across France and Germany, from the Swiss border in the south to the coast of Belgium on the North Sea.

Between the trenches was “no man’s land,” a couple of hundred yards, more or less, of scorched earth and shell craters over which neither side could advance.

Yet, on that Christmas Eve 105 years ago tonight, the British Expeditionary Force heard German troops singing Silent Night to them. They responded with The First Noel. The carols continued, back and forth. In places, the Germans were joined by brass bands. Eventually, soldiers from both sides, encouraged by assurances of a Christmas peace, ventured cautiously into No Man’s Land. They exchanged Christmas greetings, whiskey, food and cigars. Despite orders against it, the truce continued through Christmas Day.

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