No One Wants to Die on Christmas: Mustard Seed’s "All is Calm"

Calling off a war for Christmas is no easy feat. On Christmas Eve, 1914, in the midst of World War I, German soldiers tried. They laid down their arms to light candles and string tinsel, carefully, along the barbed wire above their trenches. When they started singing carols, the British answered back with some of their own. Then a single German soldier stepped out into No Man’s Land. Probably terrified... or drunk. Despite calls from commanding officers not to go out there, the British soldiers followed suit, stepping out in the wasteland between the trenches. Soon enemies were shaking hands, swapping trinkets, drinking schnapps, and organizing soccer games.

What became known as the Christmas Truce of 1914 wasn’t official, and it wasn’t ubiquitous; some soldiers were even shot attempting to call their own short truce, but still thousands of German and British troops (and some French) took out a day, or sometimes a week, to celebrate the season.

When plawright Peter Rothstein found out about the war’s weird Christmas, he created All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. Designed as a radio musical drama, much of the story is told through the songs that led to the night of peace on the battlefield, including French carols such as “Angels We Have Heard on High,” the Scottish “Auld Lang Syne,” and the German “O Tannenbaum.”

Deanna Jent, artistic director for Mustard Seed Theatre read about the play and, as she put it, “asked Rothstein often enough” that he agreed to let her produce the show. Jent’s production adds more dramatic action, but still maintains the essence of what the play is about.

“The thing we’re going to take with us is the bravery of the soldiers,” says Jent. “And the fact that for one night they did what no one else in the world could do. They stopped the war and had a Merry Christmas.”