God Rest Ye Merry, Soldiers

September 26, 2005
This charming stocking stuffer recounts Christmas celebrations during the early Civil War, with an emphasis on how the holiday united opposing soldiers before the Battle of Stones River in 1862. Though Congress didn't decree Christmas a national holiday until 1870, it was spreading nationwide as an American tradition by the time the war broke out. In 1861, the first Civil War Christmas saw festivities in both Union and Confederate camps, but the second, after a bloody year of war, found soldiers on both sides realizing that the war was a common enemy. McIvor zooms in on the Union and Confederate armies camped near each other at Murfreesboro, Tenn., where on Christmas Eve 1862, their bands played favorite Northern and Southern tunes. When one band started "Home! Sweet Home!" thousands of homesick soldiers began to sing before being overcome by emotion, and the night fell silent. A few days later the armies clashed in one of the bloodiest battles of the war—but even amid the powder smoke soldiers helped one another's wounded and dead, marking friendly and enemy grave sites. Though this slim book skips lightly over dense history and has a slight sentimental flavor, it's distinctly readable and moving throughout.