Back to Bethlehem. Bethlehem is in the West Bank. We had to go through a check point to enter into the city of Bethlehem. Our Israeli guide is not permitted to go into Bethlehem. He has not been inside the West Bank since 2000. Once we got about a half mile from the check point we had to get into another van with a Muslim guide to take us into Bethlehem. There are very few guides that have permission to take tourists into the West Bank and also have the privledge to travel into and around parts of Israel. He is one of them. He has never left Israel but he hopes to one day. That would mean peace and harmony, world peace like some Miss America contestants say, but this would be real.His name was Ali. He went to Catholic schools growing up, so his English was very good. He was only our driver. When we got to The Palestine side of Bethlehem we were too early to go to the Church Of The Nativity, so we stopped at a gift shop that was very nice and we were able to buy some souvenirs. Once we had a coffee and bought a few things we headed to The Church of The Nativity. Again, this was not was I had envisioned. You have to keep telling yourself that when Jesus was born, there were no churches. When I picture Jesus' birthplace, it has always been a farm, field, barn, stable...well it was a cave. The entire church is brimming with stories of the past. Centuries of fighting over who is the rightful faith to control the church. The different changes of design, mosaics, floorings, windows...they all still exist. There are 4 different faiths that stake claim to the church and hold their religious services here. The Roman Catholics, The Greek Orthodox, The Armenian Christian. Here they live in harmony and have a schedule for their services. The services you see from Bethlehem on Christmas Eve are held in the church adjacent to The Church of the Nativity at St. Catherine's.
We walked up to The Church of the Nativity and you could see the original doors were quite large, maybe 25 feet high and square in shape, when the Crusaders came through, they changed the entrance to a more arched shape and dropped the height to about 12 feet, then in the 17th century the entrance was taken to a very low height and looks more like the entrance to a bunker than a church. It is less than 5 feet high and you have to bow, stoop, crawl almost to get into the church. Our guide gave us two reasons. for this. In the 17th century, people used to ride camels up to the church. They wanted to keep the camels out, so they made the door so small they could not get in! The other reason is a nicer thought. He said it is to make people bow and have reverence for this place of Christ's birth. I liked that one.
We had to wait until the Greek Orthodox service that was going on down in the caves of the church. There were about 60 people waiting with us. We heard some ringing of bells and thought that was our cue to start going down to the place of Christ's birth. We were wrong, that was the signal for the Armenian men to come out and sweep the steps and then get on their hands and knees and scrub the floor in front of the altar that was the covering of the place were Jesus was born. When they finished, we were able to go down.
Many of you may have seen this first hand or may have seen pictures of what we saw today. For anyone that has not, there is a small altar. Under the altar, there is a small protected place of marble and silver shaped like a star on the floor. It is on that spot where Jesus was born. Just about 10 yards away there is a stable like area and that is the place where the manger was set up and when the 3 wise men came to see the baby Jesus. It was highly adorned with silk cloth, silver, gold and lamps from all over the world that are lit on Christmas Eve.
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