Summary: World War I disrupted all aspects of life in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Within the context of a brutal war, soldiers sought to protect the culturally-symbolic holiday of Christmas from these disruptions through events such as the Christmas Truce of 1914. In the Ottoman Empire, charity organizations and foreign governments worked with the Ottoman state to secure Christmas meals and privileges to contact their families for prisoners being kept in Anatolia. However, all-out war also brought conflict, violence, and politics to the Christmas season. In this podcast, we examine a few Christmas cases from the WWI period based on research in the Ottoman archives.
