Bethlehem in Għajnsielem is up and running again this Christmas, which is good news for us because Bethlehem-in-Bethlehem (the Biblical site of the original Christmas) is barely running at all, this year.

For Bethlehem – historic ‘City of David’ before Christianity was even invented – is in Palestine, nowadays known as ‘Israeli-occupied Palestine’ on the West Bank (of the River Jordan).

This Christmas, as the world is more than well aware, there’s a full-out war raging. The Israel Defence Forces are intent on wiping out Hamas, the Palestinian militants still occupying Gaza only about 45 miles (73km) away from Christ’s birthplace.

To enter the original Bethlehem (the name means ‘source of bread’ in Hebrew and Aramaic) you pass through a number of military checkpoints, one of them at a 25-foot-high wall, where you and your car may be subjected to a thorough search, because of a tendency of some people to bring explosives into the town centre.

The war is not being fought in Bethlehem, of course, but that fact has not stopped shootings and bombings, which have been common in the town for years, and it is now being fought with rigour at the other side of the narrow country with occasional outbursts elsewhere.

A friend told me: “It didn’t seem appropriate to celebrate Christmas this year, the way that we usually do.” The town’s cultural office has cancelled most of its December programme.

The population of Bethlehem is roughly 20 per cent Christian. There may be some carol singing in Manger Square (which has a mosque at one side and the Church of the Holy Nativity on the other) but no traditional Christmas feast: no Nativity Bells. Certainly, no Christmas tree. The only star will be a giant silver 14-point marker in the ground, apparently depicting the very spot where Jesus was born. It may, also, be a reference to the ‘star of Bethlehem’. 

The people of Għajnsielem have been celebrating Bethlehem as it should be: as a place of joy, religion and peace

This year, therefore, there will be plenty of room at the inn, for any intrepid visitors. And, as far as I am concerned, they will be welcome to it. I do not like the place at all. Basically, there is far too much tourist tat – even more than the streets of Valletta or Scarborough or Bridlington – which cheapens the whole quasi-religious experience.

Of course, visitors to the holy-of-holies want a souvenir of the place, but it could, surely, be done with more discretion than with street vendors yelling out their wares.

The (Catholic) Church tenants have had to line the walls of the nativity scene with carpets to stop tourists chipping off pieces of rock, or even carving their names into it, for Jesus, it seems, was born in a cave, or grotto: not in a stable (wrongly assumed from ‘born in a manger’, from which animals were fed).

The souvenirs for sale are affixed to walls in the streets outside the grotto: postcards, icons, pendants, and ghastly crucifixes of all sizes. They are hanging there still, this week: but there are no visitors, hence, no buyers.

The actual site was identified some time around 320BC by the mother of Emperor Constantine I, Empress

Helena, who also discovered the actual ‘way of the cross’, and even Moses’s ‘burning bush’. Nevertheless, if, like me, you are in the Holy Land, you have to go and take a look, but the site is depressing, when (whether you believe it or not) it should be uplifting.

Gozo’s Bethlehem, by comparison, built every year by villagers in a large field known as Ta’ Passi, has no obstacles to entry and can be reached, unimpeded, from the Malta side by a five-minute walk from the ferry.

So, we should thank God for the people of Għajnsielem who, for more than 10 years now, have been celebrating Bethlehem as it should be: as a living, human, moving, colourful Christmas card, a place of joy and of religion and, most of all, of peace, wide open to people of all religions or of none.