{"id":69832,"date":"2025-12-24T20:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T20:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/69832\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T20:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T20:46:09","slug":"thousands-flock-to-bethlehem-to-revive-the-christmas-spirit-after-2-years-of-war-in-gaza-nation-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/69832\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands flock to Bethlehem to revive the Christmas spirit after 2 years of war in Gaza | Nation\/World"},"content":{"rendered":"

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) \u2014 Thousands of people flocked to Bethlehem’s Manger Square on Christmas Eve as families there and at other sites across the Holy Land heralded a much-needed boost of holiday spirit, after two years of subdued celebrations because of the war in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The city where Christians believe Jesus was born had canceled Christmas celebrations<\/a> but on Wednesday, the giant Christmas tree returned to Manger Square, temporarily replacing the wartime nativity scene of baby Jesus surrounded by rubble and barbed wire in a homage to Gaza’s suffering.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) \u2014 Thousands of people flocked to Bethlehem’s Manger Square on Christmas Eve as families…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,25384,16506],"class_list":{"0":"post-69832","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-nation_world","12":"tag-region"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69832","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=69832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}