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For most mere mortals, Christmas is the one day of year we can step away from the day-to-day battles of life and enjoy some quality time with the ones we love.

But for soldiers on the front lines, it’s not so simple. It has never been. In fact, over the centuries, some major battles have taken place on what is supposed to be a day of peace.

Starting with, the battle for our founding.

By the bitter winter of 1776, General George Washington’s Continental Army had suffered numerous defeats. Morale was low as the force had been pushed out of New York and New Jersey into Pennsylvania during the first few months of the revolution.

Washington had to do something bold to renew faith in the revolution, and get his men fired up. He knew German troops hired by the British were stationed in Trenton, New Jersey. The brilliant general figured the Germans would be out partying hard on Christmas and would be nursing major hangovers as a result – making it the perfect day to launch a surprise attack.

He was spot on.

Late in the Christmas night, Washington and his men hopped in boats and crossed the icy Delaware River undetected. At dawn on Dec. 26, about 2,400 frozen Continentals pushed into Trenton, and the surprised and groggy enemy surrendered within an hour and a half. More than 1,000 enemy troops were captured.

The mission, known as the Battle of Trenton, helped revive the hopes of the colonists, and was immortalized in an oil painting by German-American artist Emanuel Leutze in 1851.

Interestingly, Leutze did three versions of the painting. The original was part of the collection at the Kunsthalle in Bremen, Germany, and was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1942, during World War II. Leutze painted two more versions, one of which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The other was in the West Wing reception area of the White House in Washington, D.C., but in March 2015, was put on display at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, Minnesota.

The Revolutionary War was not the last time Americans would fight each other on Christmas Day. We still had to endure the Civil War.

In 1864, the North attempted to seize Fort Fisher, a vital stronghold guarding the strategic port of Wilmington, North Carolina.

It didn’t go well.

First the Union Army tried to blow up the fort’s walls with a warship packed with explosives. But they blew up their own ship instead and tipped off the Confederates that an attack was imminent. On Christmas Eve, they tried again, hammering the fort with heavy gunfire which mostly missed. And on Christmas morning, they tried shelling an area north of the fort where they could come ashore. That didn’t work either, and they were forced to retreat.

But as history knows, the Union finally succeeded in capturing the fort in January 1865. The Confederates were effectively cut off from global trade and supplies, and the Civil War ended three months later.

This Christmas we pray Americans will never again be compelled to take up arms against each other.

And all those who are serving in harm’s way will return safely home.