It seems every year editors in newspapers around the world sit down at this time of year to pen their editorials and thoughts turn to the concept of peace on earth and good will to man.
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It is perhaps the noblest vision of what we as humankind should aspire, yet somehow year after year the simple concepts get lost amid wars and mass shootings, muggings, assaults and sadly dozens of other ways we find to impart violence on one another as a species.
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There has not been a time in our history where a war has not been ongoing somewhere on our planet, where men and women armed with rifles, handguns and grenades sit prepared to shoot at other human beings at the command of one side or the other.
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The idea of peace on earth is sadly something we have not managed to achieve.
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We have gotten to the moon. We have sent unmanned ships to plants across our system. We have more scientists working on everything from cures for cancer to new varieties of grain to feed the world. We have access to more information at our fingertips than most of us 听 听 听 听 听 听can even truly imagine.
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But peace eludes us.
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Even the fabled Christmas Truce of 1914 was neither official or widespread.
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The Truce 鈥渋s often celebrated as a symbolic moment of peace in an otherwise devastatingly violent war. We may like to believe that for just one day, all across the front, men from both sides emerged from the trenches and met in No Man鈥檚 Land to exchange gifts and 听 听 听 听 听play football. But first-hand testimonies help us get closer to what really happened,鈥� notes www.bbc.co.uk
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Along the Western Front, a scattered series of small-scale ceasefires did happen between some German and British forces. But this brief festive reprieve was far from a mass event. Where it didn鈥檛 occur, 25 December 1914 was a day of war like any other. Where it did, 听 听 听 听 听accounts suggest that men sang carols and in some cases left their trenches and met in No Man鈥檚 Land.
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鈥淢eanwhile, in other places along the front, like Yser, bloody battles took place over the Christmas period and those that dared to come above the parapet were met not by gifts but gunfire. Belgian, Indian and French troops who witnessed episodes of fraternisation 听 听 听 听 听 听were at best puzzled and at worst very angry that British troops were being friendly towards the Germans.鈥�
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Certainly we should hold to the ideal of peace on earth, but today we seem more embroiled in a monotonous debate about whether we should say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays when wishing others the best of the season, a season that in a diverse society includes 听 听 Christians, Jews, Muslim, Hindu and dozens of other religious groups each following their own distinct path of faith.
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It is hard to envision the achievement of true peace when we can鈥檛 agree to respect how another offers holiday wishes, yet when it comes to December the time of many days of hope across a number of cultures and faith, we as humankind have to hold out the hope we 听 听 听 听 one day get it right.
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Will this year mark the start of world peace?
听Maybe, if we finally all find our goodwill to all.
