{"id":68145,"date":"2025-12-23T03:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/68145\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T03:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:35:08","slug":"why-bethlehem-is-celebrating-christmas-again-podcast-west-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/68145\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bethlehem is celebrating Christmas again \u2013 podcast | West Bank"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">This December, for the first time in three years, Bethlehem turned on its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/christmas\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas<\/a> lights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">For the place in the world most associated with Christmas, the scene of the nativity itself, it was a highly symbolic act. Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza \u2013 and in solidarity with fellow Palestinians in the strip \u2013 the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/west-bank\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">West Bank<\/a> town has had no tree at its centre, no street decorations, no markets and no festivals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Pastor Munther Isaac talks about about the historic town\u2019s ancient Christian community, its Christmas traditions and what it has meant to Bethlehem not to celebrate the last two Christmases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He tells Helen Pidd about the decision to celebrate once more, since the ceasefire agreement in October, even as people in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/gaza\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gaza<\/a> continue to be killed. &#8216;We rose as if from the midst of ashes to say: we\u2019re still here,\u2019 he says, \u2018we\u2019re resilient, and we as a people love life.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Christmas and New Year celebrations are held along the streets of Manger Square around the Church of the Nativity, believed to be the birthplace of Jesus\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4480.jpg\" width=\"445\" height=\"356.1986607142857\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"dcr-evn1e9\"\/> Photograph: Mussa Qawasma\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This December, for the first time in three years, Bethlehem turned on its Christmas lights. For the place&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-68145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}