THE BEER BEAT: Beer and the Christmas Truce, France, 1914.

Photo credit and more.

"The two barrels of beer were drunk, and the German officer was right: if it was possible for a man to have drunk the two barrels himself he would have bursted before he had got drunk. French beer was rotten stuff."

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is the stuff of Great War myth and legend, but it really happened.

What style of beer was in those barrels, anyway?

Beer Makes the Armistice, by Eileen L. Wittig (Foundation for Economic Education)

By now we’ve all heard of the Christmas Truce of 1914, whether because we are cultured and learned citizens, or because we saw Sainsbury’s Christmas commercial a couple years ago. And because we are all cultured and enjoy edifying ourselves, we know the general events that started and continued the truce. (In case you partied so thoroughly you forgot, the reason was that both sides wanted to celebrate Christmas, and they were sick of the trenches. Solid reasons.) But no one talks about the best part of the truce – the beer.

Here's a Christmas toast for the ages.

After all, the enemy who agrees that my beer enemy is bad at making beer is my friend.