The real story
The truce wasn't planned. Along parts of the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914, German soldiers put candles and small trees on their trench parapets and sang carols, 'Stille Nacht' among them. British troops sang back. The next day men from both sides met in no man's land to shake hands, swap buttons, cigarettes and food, and, just as importantly, bury the dead who had been lying out there for weeks.
The football is real but smaller than the legend. Letters describe informal kickabouts in a few places, sometimes with a tin can or a ball of rags, rather than an organised match with a score. Commanders on both sides were furious. In the following years orders and artillery barrages made sure no truce on that scale happened again.
