1776: George Washington and the Continental Army cross the Delaware River
At the end of 1776, the Revolutionary War looked like it might be lost for colonial forces. A series of defeats by the British had depleted morale, and many soldiers had deserted the Continental Army. Desperate to strike a decisive victory, on Christmas Day General George Washington led 2,400 troops on a daring nighttime crossing of the icy Delaware River. Stealing into New Jersey, on December 26 the Continental forces launched a surprise attack on Trenton General Washington’s gamble paid off. Many of the Hessians were still disoriented from the previous night’s holiday bender, and colonial forces defeated them with minimal bloodshed. While Washington had pulled off a shock victory, his army was unequipped to hold the city and he was forced to re-cross the Delaware that same day—this time with nearly 1,000 Hessian prisoners in tow.
1914: The World War I Christmas Truce is reached
The year 1914 saw the Christmas spirit manifest itself in the most unlikely of places-a World War I battlefield. Starting on the evening of December 24, scores of German, British and French troops in Belgium laid down their arms and initiated a spontaneous holiday ceasefire. The truce was reportedly instigated by the Germans, who decorated their trenches with Christmas trees and candles and began singing carols like “Silent Night.” British troops responded with their own rendition of “The First Noel,” and the weary combatants eventually ventured into “no man’s land”—the treacherous, bombed-out space that separated the trenches—to greet one another and shake hands.According to accounts from the men involved, the soldiers shared cigarettes and pulls of whiskey, and some exchanged Christmas presents with men they had been shooting at only hours before. Taking advantage of the brief lull in combat, some Scottish, English and German troops even played a pick-up game of soccer on the frozen battlefield.
1968: Apollo 8 orbits the moon
As part of 1968’s Apollo 8 mission, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders spent the night before Christmas orbiting the moon. The operation was originally planned to test out the lunar module—later used in the Apollo 11 moon landing—in Earth’s orbit. But when work on the module fell behind schedule, NASA ambitiously changed the mission plan to a lunar voyage. Apollo 8 went on to result in a series of breakthroughs for manned space flight: The three astronauts became the first men to leave Earth’s gravitational pull, the first to orbit the moon, the first to view all of Earth from space and the first to see the dark side of the moon.Apollo 8 is perhaps best remembered today for the broadcast the three astronauts made when they entered the moon’s orbit on Christmas Eve. As viewers were shown pictures of the moon and Earth from lunar orbit, Borman, Lovell and Anders read the opening lines of the book of Genesis from the Bible. The broadcast—which ended with the famous line “Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth”—became one of the most watched television events in history.