I have already covered one Sabaton song as part of my musical journey, but as Christmas approaches I thought that covering their song Christmas Truce at this time would be highly appropriate.
Sabaton’s music is mostly about war, their latest album Legends taking a diversion from this and featuring legendary figures from the ages. But I digress as this is a track from their 2022 album The War To End All Wars which is about the First World War.
Christmas Truce is based on real events, where on Christmas Day in 1914, an amazing thing happened along a number of sections of the trenches on the front line. British and French troops faced German troops, the trenches literally separated by a hundred yards of mud, littered with shell holes.
Soldiers from both sides held up white flags, came out of their trenches, met in no man’s land, shook hands with their opponents. They shared food and drink, sang songs and even played games of football in what was a surreal truce after months of horrific fighting.
The previous day they were fighting each other and sadly the day after Christmas Day they would return to fighting, but for just one day that was special to all sides, they made peace with each other.
War after all is created by leaders and politicians, ordinary people are just pawns and don’t hate the enemy, they solely have to fight them to win and to survive.
I hope you enjoy the song and the video and if so, please do share this post to help me to get more exposure in a time where blog posts lose traffic to the main social media sites.
Did you notice in the video that the music being played on the piano by Joakim was Carol Of The Bells?
Also, the female vocals at the end of the video while the credits are rolling are by Floor Jansen, the lead vocalist for Nightwish.
Christmas Truce Lyrics
This is such a moving song that I thought it appropriate to include the lyrics, which are taken from the Sabaton site.
Silence
Oh, I remember the silence
On a cold winter day
After many months on the battlefield
And we were used to the violence
Then all the cannons went silent
And the snow fell
Voices sang to me from no man’s land
We are all, we are all, we are all, we are all friends
And today we’re all brothers
Tonight we’re all friends
A moment of peace in a war that never ends
Today we’re all brothers
We drink and unite
Now Christmas has arrived and the snow turns the ground white
Hear carols from the trenches, we sing O holy night
Our guns laid to rest among snowflakes
A Christmas in the trenches, a Christmas on the front far from home
Madness
Oh I remember the sadness
We were hiding our tears
In a foreign land where we faced our fears
We were soldiers
Carried the war on our shoulders
For our nations
Is that why we bury our friends?
We were all, we were all, we were all, we were all friends
A Christmas on the frontline, we walk among our friends, we don’t think about tomorrow, the battle will commence
When we celebrated Christmas, we thought about our friends, those who never made it home, when the battle had commenced
Phoebe From TV Christmas Truce Reaction
Several months ago I came across Phoebe on YouTube who is also taking a musical journey and producing reaction videos to songs that her subscribers have recommended.
Christmas Truce is one of the songs covered by Phoebe and as usual she ends up in tears and has me in tears along with her as she listens to songs for the first time. I hope you have time to watch this reaction video and if you like it, please do subscribe to Phoebe’s channel as she has covered some great songs and artists.
About My Musical Journey
I thought my musical journey had ended years ago as I really don’t (or didn’t) like modern music (pop, hip hop, rap etc) and there is nothing that I like on mainstream radio. My love since my teenage years has been Classic Rock and Prog Rock, although I had added to that some World Music, Latin and New Country through living in the USA and working in Central/South America in the 1990’s.
Nothing really changed until Covid hit in 2019 and I ended up working from home. While working (Analyst/Programmer) I would listen to YouTube to help me focus and once YouTube started suggesting new artists to me, I soon went down a lot of rabbit holes on a musical discovery journey that is still ongoing.
I am now a huge fan of a number of bands in genres that I didn’t know existed, including Power Metal, Symphonic Metal, Nordic/Viking, Japanese Metal, European Pagan Folk and more.
In this suite of posts I am hoping to help enlighten more people who are only aware of the artists that they hear on mainstream radio, as there are so many other amazing artists out there that they have never heard of.
I have some live videos from concerts that I have been to on my YouTube Channel. You are invited to take a look and if you like what you see, please do subscribe to my channel.
If you would like to leave me a comment to let me know what you think of this song/artist or to suggest an artist that I might like to listen to, I would appreciate that.
