In 2023, for Christians, the unthinkable has happened: In Bethlehem in the West Bank, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, the place where Christmas began, Christmas has been canceled.
The reason: The seeming war-without-end being waged between Israel and Hamas, with its ever-present threat of violence, death, and destruction, has turned Manger Square, the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born, into a veritable ghost town.
The Church of the Nativity, perhaps one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the world, a place where thousands of pilgrims habitually flocked to, is eerily quiet. Hotels in the ancient cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, considered sacred in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam alike, and usually booked to capacity during the Christmas season, are dark and empty.
Souvenir shops are shuttered, as their usual clientele is gone from the deserted plazas. Without their usual income, those merchants, and their families, are suffering financially.
That’s because in November, as the war continued despite worldwide pleas for cease-fires, and hostage releases were at first spurned and then only briefly allowed, patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem urged their congregations to forgo customary seasonal celebrations and observances.
“How can we celebrate Christmas when thousands … got killed and injured and thousands of houses were destroyed?” one local prelate was quoted as saying. “It is time for compassion and solidarity, not for joyful and worldly celebrations.”
Even as holiday observances in the Holy Land were muted, the warfare raged on not far away, with Jerusalem reportedly being targeted by missiles for “the first time in weeks.”
All of this prompted Pope Francis to say, at the end of his Dec. 13 general audience: “I continue to follow the conflict in Israel and Palestine with much worry and pain. I renew my call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire: there is so much suffering there.
Please, no to weapons, yes to peace.”
But the Holy Father’s voice is far from the only one crying out for an end to the warfare, destruction, political sparring, and hate-motivated attacks that have bubbled to the surface of the world’s consciousness in the wake of the Oct. 7 assault/hostage-taking on Israel and the ongoing retaliatory bombing and military incursions.
In the wake of that, antisemitic attacks on individuals here in New York are rising dramatically, and strident protests, by Jewish and Palestinian students and sympathizers alike, have erupted on college campuses across the country.
During a season when “peace on earth, and goodwill toward men,” used to be watchwords, those have been replaced by suspicion, mistrust, and wariness.
With days to go before the arrival of another Christmas, here in New York, and the U.S., unlike in the Holy Land, signs of the season — ornament-laden trees, fully-lit menorahs, glistening lights, stores filled with shoppers — are ever-present.
What we can do, and should do, is take a moment to pray for the beleaguered Holy Land and its inhabitants, that the strife they’re enduring will end soon, without further bloodshed, and that peace will return once again to the historic place where the Prince of Peace was born.