DESCRIPTION: This unusual episode consists of nothing more than a recording of Jack reading a piece he wrote on the Christmas Truce of 1914—a most peculiar event in World War I that raises the question of just what Jesus had in mind for his true followers. Jack debuted the piece at the Montana Christmas! concert on Saturday, 17 December 2022 at the Lincoln Center in Billings, MT. It is accompanied by a digitally-produced version of a rare variation of the tune of Away in a Manger. At this point, Jack is not sure whether this is his own version of the melody, as it has congealed in his mind for over a decade before he wrote it down, or whether it’s close to some other rare version he has actually heard before.

It was in August of the year 1914 that World War I broke out—that “war to end all wars”—as the warmongers had called it.  The soldiers had all been promised they would be “home by Christmas”.  But only a liar or a fool would have promised such a thing. 

And there the humans stood in the trenches, along the Western Front—in Germany on the one side, and in Belgium and France on the other—these soldiers who had not started the thing but who were expected to give their very lives for the cause.  Many of them were volunteers, and the war had broken their families, for a time, at least—and their careers and their routines of life and their dreams.

As Christmas drew near, the promised end of the war was nowhere in sight.  The suffering of each side was heavy.  Their opposing trenches were 300 yards apart in some places,