Christmas truce

The , also known as the Christmas Armistice, which took place at Ypres (TV: Twice Upon a Time) on 25 December 1914 was a near-mythical event in World War I. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go) For Christmas, British and German soldiers temporarily ceased fighting to play football against each other, share cigarettes, and pass around photographs of loved ones in the No Man's Land. (COMIC: The Weeping Angels of Mons) The Ninth Doctor served as a referee for one of the football matches (COMIC: The Forgotten)

The celebrations were witnessed by the First Doctor, Steven Taylor, and Sara Kingdom; (PROSE: The Little Drummer Boy) the Fifth Doctor and Peri Brown; (PROSE: Never Seen Cairo) and the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. (COMIC: The Forgotten) The next day, soldiers resumed fighting. (PROSE: The Little Drummer Boy)

Which side won the football match remained a matter of contention even into the 21st century. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go)

A couple of hours before the truce began, Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart was to die when he and a wounded German soldier shot each other. After encountering the Testimony who removed Lethbridge-Stewart from the battlefield to record his memories, the First Doctor and the Twelfth Doctor returned him to the battlefield. However, the Twelfth Doctor adjusted the time period so that time resumed for the two men at the beginning of the Christmas truce, saving their lives. The Twelfth Doctor would explain to his earlier self that "it never happened again, any war, anywhere. But for one day, one Christmas, a very long time ago, everyone just put down their weapons and started to sing. Everybody just stopped. Everyone... was just kind." The Twelfth Doctor's actions helped the First Doctor to understand the man he would become and decide to regenerate. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)