Christmas festivities in the city of Bethlehem, the biblical birthplace of Jesus Christ, are subdued this year amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Roman Catholic Church’s Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, led a procession consisting of some Franciscan monks and a handful of other believers Sunday to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, Deutsche Welle reported.
Midnight Mass will be held in the town’s historic Church of the Nativity, considered to be the place of Jesus' birth. However, a large Christmas tree that usually is located in front of the church during Advent has been missing this year.
Unlike in previous years, there have been no musical festivities, no tree-lighting ceremony, and no extravagant decorations to celebrate Christmas in the city, The New York Times reported.
"This year, without the Christmas tree and without lights, there's just darkness," Vietnamese Franciscan monk John Vinh told The Associated Press.
Vinh said he always comes to Bethlehem to mark Christmas. This year was especially sobering, he said, as he gazed at a nativity scene in Manger Square with a baby Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, reminiscent of the hundreds of children killed in the fighting in Gaza.
Barbed wire surrounded the scene, the gray rubble reflecting none of the joyous lights and bursts of color that normally fill the square during the Christmas season.
"I have never seen it like this," said Rev. Spiridon Sammour, a Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of the Nativity, CNN reported.
"Christmas is joy, love and peace. We have no peace. We have no joy. It is out of our hands, and we pray for the leaders who will make the decisions [all] over the world to God to help them, give them his light to make peace here and all over the world."
Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor at Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, explained the emotional effect of the war on the locals.
"We’ve been glued to our screens, seeing children pulled from under the rubble day after day. We’re broken by these images," Isaac said, the Times reported. "God is under the rubble in Gaza; this is where we find God right now."
Normally visited by tens of thousands of people this time of year, Bethlehem has been a virtual ghost town in terms of tourists.
Local officials say over 70 hotels in Bethlehem have been forced to close, leaving thousands unemployed, DW reported.
The West Bank’s economy has suffered after Israel canceled work permits for Palestinians after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Israel has restricted movement in Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in the West Bank since the attack, CNN reported.