Christmas in the Holy Land

Christmastime has never really been my favourite time of year. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the glut of celebrations: the Christmas feast; the New Year party; the Boxing Day madness; all the birthdays that seem to fall around the lot. What gets me is the jingles and the tinsel and the glitter and all the saccharine-snowy-festive-fun bullshit you get pumped with back at home. This, however, is a tired old rant, and one I won’t bore people with again.

Being in the Holy Land did change things a whole lot though. Most obviously, there was far less mention of it: Bethlehem and half of Jerusalem are in Palestine, and this is without doubt a Muslim country. Fairly obvious point, I guess, but it did make me think of all the psalms and songs people sing alluding to this region, without a thought for the disconnect between the reality of the situation and the popular imagery which has taken hold.

Regardless, we decided to go and busk in Bethlehem on the 23^rd - we figured that way there wouldn’t be too many tourists, and we had to at least see the place at Christmastime. Bethlehem itself is a beautiful little city, and in a far better condition than Nablus or Ramallah, flushed as it is with the tourist dollar. The shops sell an odd mix of Palestinian symbols and Christian trinkets, and the generic designer goods stores could have been in any European town. There is plenty of tack here, but what do you expect from the town in which Jesus was born? We found a place and set up busking.

We started in the main square and attracted a big crowd, but no one wanted to throw money past the scrawl of kids who’d gathered close; we tried the Church of the Nativity but were moved on; we tried one of the main streets and made a handful of shekels, but had to pause for evening prayer. We decided to move to a bar, whose owner said we could have two beers apiece if we played there for the evening. When we got there the place was empty, but he brought us beer, we set up on the sidewalk and started to play. We worked our way through a selection of Christmas carols interlaced with Irish jigs, and a fifteen-year-old kid joined us who played a mean Arabic drum. The owner brought more beer, then wine, and then more wine; he was Armenian, and happy to be drinking with us. The cafe stayed empty, the bottles piled up, and we played on into the night. We’d been there around six hours before we decided to leave; we hadn’t made more than a few shekels, but the wine easily covered our taxi fare.

Leaving the next morning we saw crowds of people arriving; just the tourists we wanted to avoid. There was a large procession of drumming scouts parading through the town centre, which was quite surreal, but not strange enough to grab our attention for any length of time. We regrouped, made it to the taxi station and organized a lift back to Nablus, stopping in Ramallah to pick up supplies for Christmas. The Eve was a day of rest and preparation, and Christmas itself was a grand old affair. There are about a dozen internationals left at the moment, about half from Project Hope and half working with the local music centre. We managed to put together a good feast (including turkey) and had a day which felt very far removed from the madness of Palestine. The evening rapidly fades to a blur in my memory, but I’m pretty sure it was a great day. The following night we curried the rest of the turkey and finished the scotch. Roll on New Years...