The glittering Christmas tree in Manger Square, Bethlehem, pictured here in December 2022, will not be on display this year.

This Christmas, many of us in Bethlehem just want to stay home, spend time with our families and feel safe. I think of Mary and Joseph in search of a safe place and being turned away, time and again.

World-famous Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem have been put on hold due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean) ...

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The typically bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus resembled a ghost town Sunday after Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Hamas war.

Bethlehem, a town nearly synonymous with Christmas, is located in what is now the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Many Palestinians are too distressed by the war in Gaza to hold Christmas celebrations.

People attend Christmas celebrations around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank. (Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) She concluded, "But Christmas will not be without hope.

Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, center, leads the Christmas morning Mass at the Chapel of Saint Catherine in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Monday, Dec. 25, 2023.

The cancellation of Christmas festivities is a severe blow to the town's economy. Tourism accounts for an estimated 70% of Bethlehem’s income — almost all of it from the Christmas season.

According to the Christmas story, Mary was forced to give birth to Jesus in a stable because there was no room at the inn. Today, nearly all of Bethlehem’s 5,500 hotel rooms are empty.

There’s no place like Bethlehem at Christmas time. Horse-drawn carriages haul visitors up and down historic street Main Street, decked with holiday lights and garlands lighting up the sidewalks.

Actors portray a family of shepherds who were just told by an angel of Jesus Christ's birth in a manger in Bethlehem during a performance of "Living Bethlehem," a live nativity, at the American ...