Happy Christmas - Shall we call a Truce?

Author Jane Gunn

Mediation is all about calling a truce and stepping off the conveyor belt of litigation. It is also about humanising rather than demonising the people involved because the litigation process is by it’s nature both dehumanising and demonising.

On Christmas Day, 1914, in the first year of World War I, German, British, and French soldiers disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy", along two-thirds of the Western Front German troops held Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas." "You no shoot, we no shoot."

Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man's land strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before.

They agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high. A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight.

The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range of the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial human life is. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true.

At a time when it seems we are more polarized, traumatized, angry and broken and more divisive than ever, I truly believe the world really could be different if we refuse to be divided and embrace unity. And this is why mediation and the skills, tools and mindset of mediation are so relevant in the world we live in today.

(Excerpted from David G. Stratman, We CAN Change the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life)