There's no Christmas tree or sparkling lights in Manger Square or along the cobble-stone streets that should be bustling with foreign tourists this time of year. There will be no Christmas parade with musicians weaving through the old city's labyrinth walkways, no Santas on street corners doling out joy to children.
At Christmas House, Giacaman's shop, things have been bad since shortly after the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel by Gaza-based Hamas militants that killed 1,200 people, Israel says.
"This is the worst Christmas. Even during the first intifada, the second intifada, it was not like this," he says,
Just off of Manger square, Osama Al-Alli chats with a dozen or so of his fellow taxi drivers, as they wait in vain for a fare. In most years, there would be "many people coming from all the world,"
Al-Alli, who is a Muslim, worries about the future. "But I am praying for peace, for Israel and Palestine to come together," he says.
One of the few visitors is Florida resident Linda Nocera. Nocera thinks the decision by the city's churches to forego Christmas celebrations is the right one, "because of the war and because of all of the terrible killing," she says.
"It's heart-wrenching and I believe it's not of God in any way, shape or form," she says.
A short walk from the Church of the Nativity is the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church. There, the Rev. Munther Isaac and his congregation chose this year to make a statement about the killing of so many children in Gaza.
Using broken cement and paving stones, they placed the baby Jesus in the center of a pile of debris from a collapsed home, inspired by television images of children being pulled from the rubble, Issac says.
"I always say we need to de-romanticize Christmas," he says. "In reality, it's a story of a baby who was born in the most difficult circumstances and the Roman Empire under occupation, who survived the massacre of children himself when he was born. So the connection was natural to us."
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