Santa in Bethlehem
Photo: AFP
Christmas celebrations in Manger Square
Photo: AP
A battered Bethlehem gears up for Christmas
Bethlehem grooms itself for Christmas celebration unlike any other in the world: Patriarch enters with heavy security; President Abbas calls for peace; Tourists find atmosphere 'surreal.' Mayor of Bethlehem: Celebration is joy to the citizens of Bethlehem
Thousands of people, joined by marching bands, clergymen in magenta skullcaps and children dressed as Santa Claus, gathered in the center of Bethlehem Sunday to celebrate Christmas Eve, doing their best to dispel the gloom hovering over Jesus' traditional birthplace.
In an annual custom, Bethlehem's residents enacted Christmas rituals that seem out of place in the Middle East. Palestinian Scouts marched through the streets, some wearing kilts and pompom-topped berets, playing drums and bagpipes. They passed inflatable red-suited Santas, looking forlorn in the West Bank sunshine.
Other aspects of this Bethlehem Christmas, however, could take place nowhere else. To get to town, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Roman Catholic Church's highest official in the Holy Land, rode in his motorcade through a huge steel gate in the Israeli security fence that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem.
''God wants us all to be peacemakers. He wants every believer who has faith in God, Jewish, Muslim or Christian to work to make peace,'' Sabbah said in his annual Christmas address at his Jerusalem office before departing for Bethlehem. ''Our leaders so far have only made war, they haven't made peace,'' Sabbah said.
Church of the Nativity behind a Palestinian flag. Christmas 2006 (Photo: AFP)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Muslim, joined the celebrations, expressing hope that his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Saturday would lead to a breakthrough in peace efforts.
This Christmas finds the Palestinian Authority governed, for the first time, by the militant Islamic group Hamas. To alleviate Christian fears ahead of the holiday, Hamas promised that it would send USD 50,000 to decorate Manger Square, in the town's center, for the holiday. It wasn't clear if the money arrived.
Even so, Manger Square and the surrounding buildings were decorated in neon lights. Bands performed on a stage, and a large screen beamed images of Palestinian flags and officials.
Bethlehem's mayor, Victor Batarseh, said his city would celebrate Christmas despite the hardship. ''With all this oppression, this economic stress, physical stress, psychological stress, we are defying all these obstacles and we are celebrating Christmas so that we'll put joy into the faces of our children, joy to the citizens of Bethlehem,'' he said.
By evening, Manger Square was bustling with thousands of people.
''It hasn't really set in that I am here in Bethlehem where everything happened so many thousand years ago,'' said an overwhelmed Matt Lafontaine, a 21-year-old university student from Plymouth, Minnesota. ''It's really exciting. It's just starting to set in. It's surreal.''
Israel's Tourism Ministry forecast 18,000 tourists would visit Bethlehem this year, up from 16,000 last year, but far below the tens of thousands of people who thronged Manger Square at the height of peacemaking in the 1990s.
Every Christmas finds the Holy Land's Christian community a bit smaller. The native Palestinian Christian population has dipped below 2 percent of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem, down from at least 15 percent in 1950, by some estimates. Bethlehem is now less than 20 percent Christian.
