Bethlehem
Published 2026-08-21
Christmas in Betlehem and how the families celebrate the holiday in the holy lands
Our shop stands in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, a short walk from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Bethlehem is about six miles south — close enough that on a clear day the drive takes under half an hour, and far enough that most visitors treat it as a separate pilgrimage.
For most of the year that road is quiet. In December it is not.
The Church of the Nativity sits at the eastern end of Manger Square, and it does not announce itself. There is no grand west front, no flight of steps. The main entrance is the Door of Humility — a low stone opening that forces every person who enters, of any rank, to bend.
Inside, past the columns, a stairway leads down to the grotto that has been venerated as the birthplace of Christ since at least the fourth century. A silver star is set into the marble floor. The queue to reach it can take hours in Advent, and nobody in it seems to mind.
Above ground the square fills slowly through the afternoon. The stalls that sell coffee and sesame bread pack away, chairs come out, and by early evening there is a crowd waiting for the processions and the choirs. It is loud, and cold, and not especially solemn — which surprises people who arrive expecting a hushed thing.
Here is what almost no visitor knows before they come: Bethlehem celebrates Christmas three times.
Three communities share the Church of the Nativity, and each keeps its own calendar inside it. So the decorations in Manger Square stay up for the better part of a month, and the town is host three separate times to people who have travelled a very long way.
If you are planning a pilgrimage and want the town at its fullest, come for the first. If you want the grotto without the queue, come between them.
Olive wood carving has been a Bethlehem trade for centuries. The craft is traditionally said to have been taught to local families by Franciscan friars in the medieval period, and it has passed down household to household ever since — the workshops today are often the same families, several generations on.
The material is part of the reason it endures. Olive trees are not felled for carving; the wood comes from pruning, which is done anyway to keep the trees productive. A carved piece is a byproduct of an orchard still standing. The grain is dense and irregular, so no two pieces take the finish the same way, and the wood keeps a faint scent for years.
Mother of pearl is the town's other craft, worked from shell into inlay and small carved reliefs. It is fiddly, slow work, and there are fewer people doing it every decade.
A nativity set carved in Bethlehem is not a themed ornament. It is an object made a few miles from the grotto it depicts, by a family whose parents and grandparents made the same thing, from a tree that is still alive.
That is most of what we can tell you about it honestly. The rest is grain and tool marks and the fact that it will outlive everyone reading this.
Our own shop has stood in the same doorway in the Christian Quarter for over fifty years and three generations — George Ari, who founded it; his son Tony, who built the relationships with the craftsmen we still buy from; and Tony's sons, who put it online so that people who cannot make the journey can still bring a piece of it home.
If you are coming this Advent, the road south is short and worth taking. If you are not, we ship to more than forty countries, and everything leaves by hand from the same stone alleyway.
From all of us in the Christian Quarter — a blessed Christmas, whichever of the three you keep.
Tags: bethlehem, chrismas, holyday, holylands