As a Palestinian-American minister, I've long known that the Bethlehem in Christmas carols bears little resemblance to the occupied West Bank city my family struggles to hold on to
I grew up in Bethlehem with a simple Advent ritual.
Every Christmas season, I would light a white candle inside the Church of the Nativity - a small flame meant to symbolise hope, peace and the quiet expectation that Christ enters even the hardest places.
The candle was more than tradition. It was our way of saying that despite everything we endured, God had not abandoned Bethlehem.
This Advent, that ritual collided with a different reality.
In the Grotto of the Nativity, two Palestinian children, Layna and Jivan, lit a red candle in place of the usual white one, launching the Red Candle campaign - an act of solidarity with suffering families in Bethlehem, Gaza and across Palestine.
The moment was understated, almost hidden, but the symbolism was unmistakable: the world that sings about Bethlehem each December does not always see the place we know.
Some pastors have gone so far as to deny the geography of our biblical story.
One well-known evangelical leader told his millions of followers: "Jesus is the one born in Bethlehem... not Bethlehem of the West Bank, no, no such thing." His message was unmistakable - acknowledging the modern Palestinian town somehow distorts the biblical narrative.
And yet Bethlehem is not an abstraction. It is a real place with real families, real churches and a continuous Christian presence stretching back two millennia. It is where my relatives still live and where generations have prayed since the earliest centuries of the faith.
Erasing its contemporary identity is not only historically inaccurate but spiritually careless - a way of protecting an imagined Holy Land while ignoring the people who live there now.
This is the gap between the Bethlehem many imagine and the one we know and live. (more...)
Why I'm lighting a red candle for Bethlehem this year
Red Candle Light for Palestine
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