A (Christmas related) commericial done right. WW1 related.

While I agree it's too early for the holiday commercials. This one is really well done with a history lesson from WWI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NWF2JBb1bvM

Good commercial. I've read stories of things similar to that happening during war, but it's nice to have a commercial that isn't throwing product in your face. There is usually a few a year.

I always found it crazy and kind of funny that the two sides spent Christmas together and then went back to gassing and bayonetting each other the next day.

GameboyRMH wrote: I always found it crazy and kind of funny that the two sides spent Christmas together and then went back to gassing and bayonetting each other the next day.

I don't think I could do it. Probably the reason I didn't enlist.

Cool ad.

I seem to remember there being situations like this during the American Civil War.

GameboyRMH wrote: I always found it crazy and kind of funny that the two sides spent Christmas together and then went back to gassing and bayonetting each other the next day.

Yes and no.. the generals had to transfer a lot of those troops away from the lines after that.

GameboyRMH wrote: I always found it crazy and kind of funny that the two sides spent Christmas together and then went back to gassing and bayonetting each other the next day.

You have never heard of a "civilized" war? The British were pretty big into that. As noted, there was the idea of a parlay. Stop fighting for a bit so they could talk about how they were going to kill each other.

Critical to this idea I believe is the concept that the Officers were civilized, while the enlisted did all the dying (after all, if they didn't want to be enlisted, they should have been born to a better family ). It was actually considered "bad form" to kill officers for a while.

WWI was pretty good at killing off (quite literally) the whole "civilized war" concept.

In reply to aircooled:

Yup, "civilized war" IIRC during the American Revolution, they'd sometimes stop and have lunch/tea together.

I see having tea together in a 1700s-style "civilized war" as a lot less bizarre in fact...because the war itself was indeed more "civilized." The way they fought was more like a board game with Russian Roulette mixed in - or "mass dueling" if you prefer - than what we'd consider a war today. It's the weird juxtaposition between have tea together and harsh modern-ish warfare with what we would today call war crimes mixed in that makes doing the same thing in WW1 and later so bizarre.

Another thing that really boggles my mind is the way intellectuals thought war was glorious and awesome before WW1. Completely incomprehensible today.

You guys should check out the story behind it and the making of it, very cool though watching all the videos on this.

My only issue is that they're all waaaaay too clean.
Other than that (glaring) omission, yeah, way cool

Prepare to spend a couple of hours on this site:

http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wwi/

Yeah I saw that and thought it was very well done.