For many, the thought of Bethlehem at Christmastime conjures idyllic images, perhaps of a baby sleeping soundly in a manger or of a towering tree decorated in lights. But "Bethlehem is not a fairy-tale town," Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, a pastor at the Palestinian city's Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, tells NPR. A sacred site for Christians, Bethlehem is much changed this year. Amid war, city officials canceled all Christmas festivities apart from somber religious services. "There's just too much sadness" for a tree lighting and parade, per NPR. Plus, there are no tourists visiting the city and its famous Manger Square, usually bustling this time of year.
"Not even the COVID-19 pandemic reduced it to what it is now," reports Global News. "It's like a desert," a local shop owner tells the outlet. "I never seen Bethlehem in my life like that." Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, said to mark the spot of the birth of Jesus, is usually packed for weeks around Christmas. But this year, it's "so empty that a few construction workers are doing restoration work on the floor," reports NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. At the nearby Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, a gruesome nativity arrangement sits where a Christmas tree stood in previous years.
It shows "baby Jesus resting in a pile of rubble like the scenes from Gaza, while the other characters—Mary, Joseph and the wisemen—all run to try to pull him out," Lonsdorf reports. "It is a reflection of the story playing out on screens everywhere: the horrific images of the destruction of Gaza, and especially, its bloodied and broken children," Jordan's Queen Rania Al Abdullah writes at the Washington Post. It also serves to "deromanticize" the Christmas story. As Isaac tells NPR, Jesus "survived a massacre of children himself when he was born." (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)
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