7 Major Battles That Happened During the Holiday Season

Not everything turned out to be as holly, jolly as the 1914 Christmas Truce.

While most people worldwide take a break from their hustling and bustling lives to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, many soldiers on the battlefront, unfortunately, continued to fight tooth and nail to live another day and defend the peace of those staying at home.

Several significant military actions have occurred during the holidays, including these seven major battles on Christmas Day.

1776 The Daring Cross of the Delaware River

Unabated by the holidays, General George Washington pulled off a Christmas surprise to the Hessians, the German troops hired by the British Army during the American Revolutionary War stationed in Trenton, New Jersey. Washington reasoned that most German mercenaries would be laid back as they commemorated the holidays with all-night revelries—a perfect opportunity to rally his men forward, who was suffering from low morale after consecutive defeats. In addition to the upcoming winter storm, he thought that the enemy would be completely unprepared, and so, late Christmas night, the General led his troops of around 2,400 Continental soldiers and daringly crossed the frigid Delaware River. They arrived at the next day’s dawn and saw a vulnerable Hessian who was most of them still nursing a hangover. In less than two hours of the skirmish, the Continentals defeated the colonists and captured more than 1,000 enemy troops.

Although relatively minor, the victory Washington and his men achieved on that festive night had boosted the overall morale and renewed the faith in the battle for independence—that the dream was, after all, possible.

1864 The First Battle of Fort Fisher

From fending off the country from colonists to fighting against brothers a century later, divided American soldiers saw little-to-no truce during Christmas—the most famous of which was during the First Battle of Fort Fisher.

For most of the war, North Carolina’s Fort Fisher saw little action until the Christmas of 1864, when the Union decided to capture the last standing port of the Confederates that held vital trading routes on the Atlantic Ocean. Known as the Gibraltar of the Confederacy, the fortress was almost impenetrable. Even a warship loaded with explosives did not take the walls down only alerted the Confederates of the attack. The Union soldiers tried again on Christmas Eve, consecutively bombarding the stronghold fort with heavy cannons, which again failed. The latter attempted heavy firing in the northern portion the following morning so troops could land and attack ashore—but this one also did not work, as the fort remained unscathed.

Disappointed, the Union finally decided to retreat. This became the most decisive battle of the Civil War, fought in North Carolina and a massive failure for the Union. Nonetheless, the second attempt went well for the North. Waiting off a freak winter storm weeks later, on January 12, 1865, the Union launched another attempt to penetrate the stronghold Fort Fisher, which was successful and ultimately cut off the Confederates from accessing global trades and supplies, catapulting to the end of the Civil War three months later.

Two years earlier, a Confederate cavalry commander seized the 1862 holiday season as an opportunity to attack Kentucky, raiding supply convoys, tearing down bridges, and launching a skirmish against the Union troops.

1914-1918 Holiday Seasons During WWI

The unofficial Christmas Truce between the British soldiers and German troops in 1914 was truly a one-of-a-kind, but it didn’t mean that everyone on the frontlines showed the same consideration for the festive occasion. Instead took the opportunity of leniency as a time to strike.

A day before Christmas that same year, Germany launched its second-ever air raid on Great Britain, just 72 hours after it conducted its first bombardment. Fortunately for those on the ground, the shellings fell short of their target and plunged into the water instead. A follow-up bomb raid shortly occurred on Christmas Eve, but this also missed its target and only struck the British shores. This, however, marked the first time in history that an enemy bomb would hit its soil, and definitely not the last until the war’s end.

Another separate combat ensued in the following years, with Ottoman troops bombarding a British-Indian perimeter and heavy fighting on the Eastern Front between German and Russian forces during the holiday seasons of 1915 and 1916, respectively. Two Latvian brigades composed of at least 40,000 troops also conducted a daring attack on Christmas Day 1916 against the Germans, storming the frontlines alongside 200 guns, and the skirmish lasted for a week. The bloody offensive caused more than 10,000 casualties.

1935 Ethiopian’s Christmas Offensive

Also known as the Battle at Dembeguina Pass, the military campaign took place near the end of the Second Italo-Ethiopian (formerly Abyssinia) War, where the latter launched an ambitious counteroffensive against Italy’s aggression to invade the country. The “Christmas Offensive” aimed to split the slogging Italian forces into two and isolate each in separate locations before overwhelmingly attacking them with a sheer number of the Ethiopian army.

The campaign briefly met with initial success as the invaders were off guard but eventually fell back due to the superiority of Italian weapons, which included the illegal chemical weapons and communication devices that the Ethiopian army lacked.

1941 Imperial Japan Invades Hong Kong

Imperial Japan was not modest, to say the least, when they joined forces with the nefarious Axis Powers alongside Germany and Italy. Even before the Second World War commenced, the Japanese aggression had already been very vicious in claiming neighboring territories—most prominently, its invasion of Manchuria, a vast coastal region in northeastern China, and the rest of the country shortly after.

Ten years later, weeks before the holidays, Imperial Japan launched a daring assault that catapulted the United States into joining the war that was immediately followed by the former’s invasion of Hong Kong that ended on Christmas Day 1941.

1939-1945 The Bloody Holiday Seasons Throughout WWII

Neither the Allies nor the Axis paid much attention to the holiday seasons throughout the Second World War and had made a point of conducting decisive campaigns on or before Christmas Day, including the 1939 pre-dawn assault of the Soviet troops against the Finnish positions on the Suvanto River; the 1940 mid-Atlantic sea warfare between Nazi German’s heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and the escorts of an Allied convoy consisted of the heavy cruiser HMS Berwick (65), aircraft carrier HMS Argus (I49), and battlecruiser HMS Furious (47). Upon retreating later that day, the Scottish steamed passenger liner SS Jumna, unfortunately, crossed paths with the German vessel and was targeted and sunk with all of its passengers perished, including those who jumped over the freezing Atlantic ocean.

As mentioned, Japan invaded Hong Kong on Christmas Day in 1941, with Hong Kong remembering the brutal occupation as the “Black Christmas” until now. Germans were surrounded and trapped in Stalingrad and didn’t celebrate the nativity in 1942, as did those involved in the Ardennes Offensive in 1944.

1972 Operation Linebacker II During Vietnam War

The controversial Operation Linebacker II, which took place days before Christmas Day of 1972, was one of the major campaigns that forced the US to end its involvement in the Vietnam War. Nicknamed the “11 Days of Christmas,” the mission consisted of 11 successive days of air raids by B-52 Stratofortress bombers under the directive of President Richard Nixon. The bomber planes flew in from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam over Vietnam to destroy major enemy areas identified as complex and “only be accomplished by B-52s.”

The bombing raid briefly paused to celebrate Christmas; however, it resumed after North Vietnam refused to return to the bargaining table. It was only until peace talks resumed on the 29th that the bombings completely stopped. Within 11 days, Operation Linebacker II dropped around 15,000 tons of bombs through 729 US Air Force sorties.

While most of the B-52s successfully accomplished their missions, fifteen were destroyed in the process killing 35 airmen and leading nearly 40 American becoming prisoners of war.

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Resources

4 Major Military Events That Happened on Christmas. (n.d.). U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/1713087/4-major-military-events-that-happened-on-christmas/

5 big military moments that took place on Christmas Day. (n.d.). Business Insider. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://www.businessinsider.com/christmas-day-military-battles-2017-12

M. (2019, December 20). War On Christmas – 15 Famous Battles That Were Fought During the Holidays – MilitaryHistoryNow.com. War on Christmas – 15 Famous Battles That Were Fought During the Holidays – MilitaryHistoryNow.com. Retrieved December 27, 2022, from https://militaryhistorynow.com/2019/12/20/the-war-over-christmas-15-famous-battles-that-were-fought-during-the-holidays/