Did the First World War Christmas truce football match really happen?

Goes to show "we" are all very similar,human, even in the hellscape of war..great bit of history..

The truce, impromptu as it was, was perceived as sufficiently threatening that the British and German senior command authorities saw fit to issue orders for draconian punishments for anyone who tried to participate in such a thing again. Apparently it's bad for morale to get it into your head that your nation's enemies might also be human.

Actually it did CPT Jack Durish Football [soccer] was played and popular with Germans, Austrians, British and French soldiers so a pickup game in no-man's land earlier in the war before poison gas was commonly used is not that remarkable.
In our own civil war enemies came to parley after all.