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This article was originally published in the Christian Science Monitor Daily 28 December 2023 issue. It is by Stephen Humphries a Monitor staff editor.

Is peace an attainable ideal? In a poem later adapted for the carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lamented:

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

I’m sometimes tempted to feel that way when I read the news. But when I recently interviewed Jeremy Arnold, author of “Christmas in the Movies,” he recommended a 2005 release that illustrates how peace can unexpectedly materialize.

In “Joyeux Noël,” set during World War I, soldiers shiver inside snowy trenches on a battlefield in France. It’s Christmas Eve. When a German soldier starts singing “Silent Night,” French and Scottish battalions across enemy lines perk their ears to listen. A Scottish bagpiper starts to accompany the German singer, who boldly clambers over the parapet and walks into no man’s land. Soldiers from each of the trenches cautiously follow. After negotiating a cease-fire, the soldiers show each other pictures of their spouses, share food, and play soccer.

“Joyeux Noël,” which is French for “Merry Christmas,” not only dramatizes the famous temporary truce of 1914, but also examines its aftermath.

“When the governments and the military establishments of … all three countries heard about this truce, they were livid,” Mr. Arnold says. “A lot of these soldiers were rotated out because now their enemies were humanized and they didn’t want to kill them anymore.”

The film movingly shows how thousands of men were transformed by the Christmas spirit, says the author.

When Longfellow wrote his aforementioned poem during the American Civil War, he acknowledged how easy it is to feel helpless about peace. But he countered it with a message of hope about how we may one day sing together.

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

… Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”