This story was initially published in 2024. Hotel Bethlehem is again participating in this tradition.<\/p>\n
The Hotel Bethlehem will partially darken its rooftop sign Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday night, as part of tradition, the part of the sign that says \u201cHotel\u201d will be turned off so that only \u201cBethlehem\u201d is lit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough Christmas night, there\u2019s a lot of hustle and bustle in the holiday season,\u201d said Bruce Haines, the hotel\u2019s managing partner. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to take a moment and reflect on what\u2019s truly important. That\u2019s our beloved community of Bethlehem here in Pennsylvania and the miracle that happened in the original Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Hotel Bethlehem, this is a tradition that goes back more than 50 years. Some former hotel employees say it may have started as early as 1960. Locals note that it paused sometime in the late \u201970s.<\/p>\n
Haines heard about the tradition in 2018 when local resident Debbie Helms told him about it. Haines said, \u201cI thought it was such a beautiful sentiment that I had to bring it back. It\u2019s a very special way to celebrate our history.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hotel is on the site of Bethlehem\u2019s first house. It\u2019s where, on Christmas Eve in 1741, Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf and other Moravian settlers named Bethlehem in honor of the place where Jesus was born.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was initially published in 2024. Hotel Bethlehem is again participating in this tradition. The Hotel Bethlehem…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,182,139,434,28,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-68486","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","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-northampton-county","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68486","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=68486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}