HOLY BETHLEHEM

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 16, 16 December 1932, Page 7

HOLY BETHLEHEM

CHRISTMAS EVE

It is Christmas Eve and we, like most other Christians in Jerusalem, are on the move down the Bethlehem Road, which undulates ahead of us to the south, a rolling ribbon of silver under a full moon. On our left, the Vailey of Hinnom; away to the east, the gaunt rampart of the Hills of Moab, and. 2000 feet below an occasional glimpse of a streak of moonlit water, which is the Dead Sea (writes Owen Tweedy). A mile past Rachael's tomb, a wide, natural amphitheatre opens in front of us. At the tip of one wing lies Bethlehem, a ladder of twinkling lights climbing the rocky Judean hillside, and in another ten minutes we draw up on the wide oblong, unevenly paved courtyard which fronts the Church of the Nativity. It l>elongs to the Greek Orthodox sect, which celebrates its Christmas ten days later. We are at once swallowed up in an Eastern throng of lights and noise and boisterous merrvmaking. Street vendors cry their wares —peanuts, Turkish delight and cakes; children romp among their elders; dogs bark, the shops are open, and we Europeans are raucously invited here, there, and everywhere to buy mementos of the place—crosses in mother of pearl and olive wood, and beads of aIL sizes and designs. And there is colour everywhere. Sophisticated Palestinians with baggv Turkish trousers, and with red tarbooshes that speak of city life, rub shoulders with wild Christian Arabs from Transjordan mountains, resplendent in Bedouin cloaks and flowing head-dresses. Here and there. with arms linked, stride the remarkable women of Bethlehem, conspicuous hv the high tapering European head-dresses to which they have adhered for eight centuries, since successive crusades brought the fashion from France, England and Germany. It is almost a reiief to escape into the cathedral gloom within the Church of the Nativity. Far-away candles =end eerie shadows dancing through a forest of pillars into the darkness of the vaulted roof. There is the hum of whispered conversation and the slipslip of many feet moving softly over and join a pilgrim procession up to the tessellated floor. We merge almostmysteriously into a dimly seen crowd the chancel, and thence down the steep st-one steps.leading to the Holy- Grotto. On one hand is the place of the birth, on the other the manger—both hung with tiny flickering lamps, and before each, in monumental stillness, kneel rows of worshippers; women of Bethlehem, monks and friars, and palefaced nuns. And all in a space so small that the kneeling congregation seem one oil top of another, and in an atmosphere of tension heightened by the strained whisper of endless prayers. Between those stid rows of worshippers move—not always silently—a constant stream of onlookers from all lands.

A good-natured priest invites us to enter the adjacent Greek monastery, and from the second-floor window, grilled and balconied, we look down into a courtyard, where choristers from St. George’s Protestant Cathedral in Jerusalem sing the carols we all have known from childhood. But we have never before heard them in such a setting. The choristers sing to the light of guttering candles. Their faces stand out like coloured lanterns floating in the breeze above the moonlit sea. After the carols, the choristers, led by our host, the Greek Archbishop, pass into the Church of the Nativity, and descend into the Grotto. Me remain above in the twilight of the chancel, and from below, as though coming from’ a great, distance, we hear, strangely moved, “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night.” Half an hour before midnight we hear the thump, thump of leaded fermies on the stone floor a-s the patriarchal ushers, staff in hand, open the way through the mob for the patriarchal procession—brilliant, almost medieval. At its head are the acolytes in lace and scarlet, behind them the Bishops of Latin Palestine, bearded figures in stiff white brocade heavily embroidered with gold; and last of all the patriarch himself, a Prince Bishop in gold and crimson—on his head a golden mitre, and in his right hand the towering crook of the patriarchal staff. The procession and the mass which follow are perfectly conceived pageants, enacted with all the meticulous polish of the West. They are celebrating n Western Christmas, and oerhaps among the spontaneous humanity of Bethlehem and under the full qlamour of a.n Eastern moon, an exotic Christmas. For our return to Jerusalem, the moon stands vertically overhead. Suddenly beyond the crest of an undulation'of the road, the Holy Citv opens in front of us across the Valley of Hinnom. Its walls stand stark against tli-e indigo of the slcy. it looks like n cubist impression in stiff lights a.na shadows. And .on the spire of the chapel of flie Latin monastery, the tal - «st building in the city, blazes a bnlliant cross. Midnight is past. Christ is born in Bethlehem.”