Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > December > 17 > Entry
Christmas lights in the Holy Land
Over the decades, as their numbers have dwindled, Christians have become mostly silent in the din of the conflict over the Holy Land.
Even their church bells are often drowned out by electronically amplified Muslim calls to prayer and sirens that herald the Jewish Sabbath.
But once a year, they assert their faith.
The other day, I set out to the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to buy Christmas lights for my tree.
The dividing lines between the city’s four quarters — Muslim, Jewish, Armenian and Christian — are mostly invisible, but during the month before Christmas, they are very clear. Homes are decorated with strands of lights, Arabic Christmas carols waft from open doorways, shops spill onto the sidewalk selling the latest Christmas kitsch — made in China, of course.
On the way, my barber, the son of a Jewish mother and Christian father (his sister married a Muslim) called out to me the familiar Palestinian holiday greeting: “Kul saneh wa inteh salim.” Every year and you are safe. Sort of like, many happy returns.
I arrived at the Christmas store, opened one month a year by a well-dressed elderly man, a refugee from pre-1948 West Jerusalem, singing Sinatra songs.
It was difficult to move amid piles of merchandise and a clutch of shoppers, speaking Arabic and French.
He was selling giant inflatable Santas, ceramic elves, tinsel, ornaments, lights. I settled on one strand of blinking white lights.
I asked him how business was this year. “Not good but not bad,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
Comments
By islander
December 17, 2008 5:31 PM | Link to this
REF: HEAD SCARF story- i lived in Saudi Arabia and women are not even allowed in a police station ~ but when people are here in our country they expect to rape our laws and our way of life… an entire country expected to cater to every single person and their beliefs before our own.. and as soon as they have aproblem Americans are expected to give money, blood tears or whatever else they desire - I’M SICK OF IT