Mark Connelly, Professor of Modern British History at the Center for War, Propaganda and Society at the UK's University of Kent believes the entire episode has been romanticized in the intervening years.
The notion of two sets of soldiers simply laying down their arms and waltzing out of the trenches ready to play an organized game of football is not one he subscribes to.
In fact he says "there is no absolute hard, verifiable evidence of a match" taking place and says the event has been glorified beyond recognition.
"There is a huge difference between a truce and fraternization and we have tended to put the two together."I think it highly likely that someone, somewhere did bring out a ball and a bit of a kick about took place, but that is a long, long way from saying it definitely happened and that it was anything like a formal match rather than just men tapping a ball about a bit," Connelly told CNN.
"Truces are very common in war and often involve both sides ignoring each other in order to carry out common tasks -- often burial of dead and retrieval of wounded.
"At Christmas 1914 where the truce occurred most men took part in it in this tacit manner rather than actively fraternized, which is clearly much more 'romantic' and appealing.
"It also made not the slightest bit of difference to the wider mindset of the armies - it was clearly temporary and hostilities would obviously resuming."
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