CHRISTMAS DAY IN BETHLEHEM

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25996, 27 December 1949, Page 5

CHRISTMAS DAY IN BETHLEHEM

7000 Visitors Arrive CELEBATIONS IN EUROPE (Rec. 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, Dee. 25. The normal population of Bethlehem of 13,000 was increased to-day to about 20,000, among them 500 pilgrims who reached Bethlehem in spite of restrictions. In the star-lit hills of Judea round the little town men with tommy-guns peered across the no-man’s-land between Arab and Jewish territory, but there was peace among the hills—a peace broken only by the sound of church bells coming from the valley below. Services were held in churches and in the square before the Church of the Nativity. More than 1000 attended Midnight Mass at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Catherine’s, adjoining the Church of the Nativity. The British and American Ambassadors to Israel were present. Paris celebrated Christmas as it used to before the war. Theatres were filled and restaurants were packed. On Christmas Eve, during a party to a small roadside hotel at Ris-Orangis, a gas main exploded, killing theproprietor and his wife outright. While firemen searched for their bodies a second explosion occurred, demolishing the building and burying and seriously injuring six firemen. This year’s Christmas was the happiest Germans had spent since the war. German children found the best assortment of toys seen for years. West Berlin dealers complained that a consignment of 60,000 Christmas trees were held up somewhere in the Soviet zone. Snow fell in Moscow. In Prague the press congratulated Czechoslovak citizens on a merry Christmas and told them that times were bad in Western countries.