AJ Goes Bells Deep – The Origins of ‘Snoopy’s Christmas’

This song drove me nuts...until I actually looked up the origins of it. Now, I appreciate it.

I'm gonna pull back the fourth wall here - yes, we get sick of the Christmas music, too. And we don't get to pick the music, so we're stuck with whatever is playing.

In the last few weeks, we've been poking fun at The Royal Guardsmen song, Snoopy's Christmas. It starts out with an unknown choir singing O Tannenbaum and then quickly turns into a story about Snoopy shooting down German soldiers.

We were like...HUH? What the heck does war have to do with Christmas and a cartoon dog?

Turns out, the song is in reference to the Christmas Truce of 1914 during WWI. British and German soldiers agreed to a ceasefire for at least a day for Christmas, with some taking the entire week between Christmas and New Year's.

Troops sent gifts across the trenches, with the Germans giving beer to the British and the British giving the Germans tobacco and canned meat.

The song, obviously, is fiction. Dogs can't fly planes. *snort* But it's based on the above story, and accurately depicts that the Germans were the first to initiate the truce.

So, now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Get it? Battle? ;)