The Morning News Tribune · 15 December 1989

CP-1989-044

It’s not the Grinch who will steal Christmas in Bethlehem, Beit Sahur

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Scan 860 × 151 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

BETHLEHEM, Israel — Festivities celebrating Christmas have been canceled in the towns of Bethlehem and Beit Sahur this year, officials said Thursday. Out of solidarity with the Palestinian uprising known as intifada, just entering its third year, both towns are refusing to put up decorated Christmas trees and lighting displays, the Beit Sahur local administration said.

In Bethlehem the mayor’s traditional Christmas reception has been canceled for the second year running, but church services will go ahead as usual, officials said. For the first time, there will be no Christmas tree this year in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, where more than a third of 35,000 residents are Christian.

“In view of the economic and political situation, we just don’t feel like celebrating,” said the Rev. Mitri Raheb. According to Raheb, there were 10 Christians among the more than 600 Palestinian victims. Instead of the traditional fir tree, a tree made from olive branches and decorated with locally made ornaments will be put up in the churches.

How this transcription was made

Transcribed by optical character recognition and read back against the scan by hand. The folio at the top right reads “The Morning News Tribune, Fri., December 15, 1989” with the page number B15, which fixes the date, the day and the paper from the page itself. The archive holds no other record under this name. It is filed as printed rather than folded into The News Tribune of Tacoma or The Morning News of Wilmington: the Wilmington paper is ruled out by its own records’ city evidence, and the Tacoma lineage, though plausible, cannot be read off this page and would rest on an attribution the archive itself derived rather than read.

Cite this clipping

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