1000’s of individuals traveled from close by cities and villages to attend Bethlehem’s annual Christmas Eve tree lighting ceremony within the metropolis’s historic Manger Sq.. Traditionally an occasion full of pleasure and surprise, it was the primary such ceremony for the reason that conflict in Gaza started in 2023. However hardly any vacationers have been in attendance.
For greater than two years, worldwide vacationers and Christian pilgrims have largely stayed away following Hamas’ lethal terrorist assaults on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Because the conflict in Gaza raged, church leaders canceled Bethlehem’s public Christmas celebrations.
However this yr, for Bethlehem Mayor Maher Canawati, the Trump administration-brokered ceasefire was cause sufficient to attempt to carry the devoted again to the place the Christmas story started.
“Bethlehem, you know, we are living from tourists, from tourism and from pilgrims who come to stay in our hotels, to eat in our restaurants, to buy our souvenirs that we’re producing here,” Canawati stated. “And there was a complete halt on tourism for the past two years.”
Members of the clergy participate within the yearly Christmas procession exterior the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Dec. 24, 2025.
Ilia Yefimovich /AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Contained in the 4th-century Church of the Nativity, one of many world’s oldest and most sacred Christian websites, round 15,000 guests would arrive day by day in instances of peace. The absence of vacationers has devastated Bethlehem’s tourism trade, and practically its whole financial system, driving unemployment as much as 70%. Lodge vacancies have been at report highs.
Muhammad Abu Jurah’s household has run a memento store in Bethlehem for generations. However during the last two years, he’s been compelled to put off all six of his workers members.
“We don’t have a lot of tourists because, you know, the war,” he stated. “So, this is why they have a big problem in Bethlehem without tourists.”
Matthew Qasis, who has labored as a tour information in Bethlehem all of his grownup life, says he’s by no means seen the world so quiet.
His message to Christians around the globe: “Come back, because Bethlehem belongs to everyone, and Bethlehem is a message of love and peace. A message needed now more than ever, and a prayer of hope that the faithful return to the place where it’s believed Christmas began.”
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, leads the yearly Christmas procession exterior the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Dec. 24, 2025.
ilia yefimovich /AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Catholic Church’s prime chief within the Holy Land and the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, commenced the vacation celebrations Wednesday throughout a conventional procession from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the Related Press reported. Pizzaballa referred to as for “a Christmas full of light.”
“After two years of darkness, we need light,” Pizzaballa stated to the gang in Manger Sq., to whom the cardinal introduced greetings from the small Christian neighborhood in Gaza, the place he had held an early Christmas mass on Sunday, AP reported. “We, all together, we decide to be the light, and the light of Bethlehem is the light of the world.”
The Related Press
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