Christmas in Bethlehem
I really only got about a day of Christmassy feelings this year, and that was on Christmas Eve Day. Nari, Torin, Chris, and a few others I barely knew walked with me all the way from our dorms on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem to Bethlehem, about five or six miles south. It got rainy and cold at the end, but it was worth the trip just to say we did it. :)
Crossing the Bethlehem checkpoint was more of a breeze than I've ever seen it, which surprised me, but maybe our group simply didn't look threatening in any way. There were free buses to take you to the main square, which was nice, but we wanted to do our walking bit. At the Nativity Square, in front of the Church of the Nativity, there were lots of people gathered, lots of lights and Christmas caroling. Madi and I almost got locked into the Church of the Nativity when they closed it down for a few hours before midnight mass, but we got to see the grotto of the Nativity, kiss the star, see the mosaics and everything. In the next-door St. Catherine's church, we caught the tail-end of a service, lit some candles and heard enthusiastic organ-playing.
Since it was extremely cold (for me, anyway) outside, a few of us ducked into a restaurant to drink hot things while Madi and I waited for Anna to come pick us up for dinner at her fiance's house nearby. While waiting, we also browsed a few touristy stores, I got a Christmas tree ornament and Madi got one of those rings that have a cross on it, so that if your hand is flat on the table the cross is sticking straight up. She thought it was awesome that they were selling the popular symbol of women right next to the church, I pointed out that it was supposed to be a religious item, not a woman power sign, and she bought it anyway to wear upside down.
Back out in the square, the tourist population (which apparently included 12,000 Nigerians at one time, we saw a procession of them walking the other way from us earlier) had dwindled, since it was nighttime, and the now predominantly Arab crowd had migrated over to one particular side, with a lane between them as if there was going to be a parade going through. Madi asked one guy what was going on, and he said, rather excitedly, "Abu Mazen is come." This guy is also known as Mahmoud Abbas (yeah, I mixed that up in our talk last night pretty badly, didn't I, Mom?) and is the leading man in the PLO. The people in the streets ran with his car as it drove up to the mosque across from the Nativity Church, then crowded around it for a long time. At that point, Anna found us and took us away to help her with dinner. Apparently, Abbas also attended the midnight mass, which we were going to do but didn't, between dinner and being tired. But it was the first time in several years that a PLO chairman came, since Arafat was restricted from leaving Ramallah.
Dinner went well, and was definitely the most Middle Eastern Christmas Eve dinner I've had, what with the pita and hummus and Arabic salsa and barbequed meat. Not that I ate the meat. But still. We all sat around and talked for a while, I went to bed tired from having walked so much, and we mostly were lazy on Christmas, watching TV and talking. I watched You've Got Mail and Who Framed Roger Rabbit on the English channels they have, though. When I got back to the dorms I talked with my mom and missed Christmas at home for a while. But overall, it was a good weekend.
At least I was blissfully free of the kind of holiday-related stress that clearly drove the people at SaveMerryChristmas.org out of their minds.
Crossing the Bethlehem checkpoint was more of a breeze than I've ever seen it, which surprised me, but maybe our group simply didn't look threatening in any way. There were free buses to take you to the main square, which was nice, but we wanted to do our walking bit. At the Nativity Square, in front of the Church of the Nativity, there were lots of people gathered, lots of lights and Christmas caroling. Madi and I almost got locked into the Church of the Nativity when they closed it down for a few hours before midnight mass, but we got to see the grotto of the Nativity, kiss the star, see the mosaics and everything. In the next-door St. Catherine's church, we caught the tail-end of a service, lit some candles and heard enthusiastic organ-playing.
Since it was extremely cold (for me, anyway) outside, a few of us ducked into a restaurant to drink hot things while Madi and I waited for Anna to come pick us up for dinner at her fiance's house nearby. While waiting, we also browsed a few touristy stores, I got a Christmas tree ornament and Madi got one of those rings that have a cross on it, so that if your hand is flat on the table the cross is sticking straight up. She thought it was awesome that they were selling the popular symbol of women right next to the church, I pointed out that it was supposed to be a religious item, not a woman power sign, and she bought it anyway to wear upside down.
Back out in the square, the tourist population (which apparently included 12,000 Nigerians at one time, we saw a procession of them walking the other way from us earlier) had dwindled, since it was nighttime, and the now predominantly Arab crowd had migrated over to one particular side, with a lane between them as if there was going to be a parade going through. Madi asked one guy what was going on, and he said, rather excitedly, "Abu Mazen is come." This guy is also known as Mahmoud Abbas (yeah, I mixed that up in our talk last night pretty badly, didn't I, Mom?) and is the leading man in the PLO. The people in the streets ran with his car as it drove up to the mosque across from the Nativity Church, then crowded around it for a long time. At that point, Anna found us and took us away to help her with dinner. Apparently, Abbas also attended the midnight mass, which we were going to do but didn't, between dinner and being tired. But it was the first time in several years that a PLO chairman came, since Arafat was restricted from leaving Ramallah.
Dinner went well, and was definitely the most Middle Eastern Christmas Eve dinner I've had, what with the pita and hummus and Arabic salsa and barbequed meat. Not that I ate the meat. But still. We all sat around and talked for a while, I went to bed tired from having walked so much, and we mostly were lazy on Christmas, watching TV and talking. I watched You've Got Mail and Who Framed Roger Rabbit on the English channels they have, though. When I got back to the dorms I talked with my mom and missed Christmas at home for a while. But overall, it was a good weekend.
At least I was blissfully free of the kind of holiday-related stress that clearly drove the people at SaveMerryChristmas.org out of their minds.
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