O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie: except the place is, in fact, buzzing in the run-up to Christmas. I had to squeeze between groups of American tourists to get into the little Church of the Nativity, built on the site where Christ was born. When I made it in, I created an impediment to the flow of pilgrims by kissing the ground near the star marking the place of his birth. Everyone who followed me did the same, with some effort on the part of the chunkier pilgrims.
It’s good news that Bethlehem is getting back to business. The shops selling nativity figures, Christmas decorations, pilgrim tat and olivewood rosary beads are hopping – the Nativity store where I got my souvenirs was stuffed with Polish pilgrims. The Christians of Bethlehem, about a quarter of the population nowadays, rely on pilgrim trade, and numbers dried up during the pandemic.
Things took an uglier turn last month at the Feast of the Holy Cross when an armed soldier spat at the patriarch
But for the Christian population, Bethlehem is inextricably linked to Jerusalem and, if you’re an Arab, it’s ridiculously difficult to travel between them: there are dozens of visas needed for different purposes – one for religious visits, one for work, another for hospitals and so on.
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