By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog

My friend, John A. Tvedtnes, who is a senior scholar at the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU, spent 8-1/2 years in Israel, from 1971 to 1979. During that time he was attending classes and doing doctoral work at Hebrew University, and he was also teaching BYU study abroad classes. During his first six years there he was first counselor in the Jerusalem branch presidency to David Galbreath (the second counselor would rotate every semester and would be a BYU professor who had brought the students over from Provo), and then his last two years there he was the Elders Quorum President.

Some time ago we were having a conversation and he mentioned visiting a poor, abandoned family in Bethlehem. I told him that that sounded incredibly “Christmassy” to me, and asked him if he would care to share his thoughts on what it was like to celebrate Christmas in the Holy Land. Below is his responsive message to me, which I share here by permission.

Let me start by saying that we did more than visit just that family. We had our own “Deseret Industries” in the Jerusalem Branch. Branch members from overseas would typically leave behind clothing, bedding, and dishes to be used by others who would follow. Many of the roughly 3000 tourists BYU brought over each year, along with the 100-200 students, would often leave clothing and other items behind so they could fill their suitcases with souvenirs. When some of these people saw that we had a whole room full of donated items, they began sending more things when they returned home. We’d get children’s clothes, toys, and almost everything imaginable (I myself left behind an electric typewriter). By the time Christmas rolled around, we had more things than we could handle, so we’d put together packets of clothing and find some poor family–usually Arabs–who could use the items. We’d go to a different village each year, and one year we took a vanload of clothing (mostly children’s) to Bethlehem. Most of the people we helped were Muslims, and I’d like to think that they will remember the goodness of the One who prompted us to help them.

Because we had two BYU semester-abroad groups that joined us each year, we celebrated Christmas twice, once in April and once in December. We would go out to a hill across the valley to the north of Bethlehem and build a bonfire and have a fireside. Our activities became so well-known that the locals began calling the area “Mormon Hill.” The December trip, which actually took place a couple of weeks before Christmas because the BYU students would be going home soon, was usually cold, but no snow on the ground. (We rarely saw snow in the Jerusalem area, where it averaged one day a year and generally melted that same day.) There was a real contrast in April, when shepherds were out at night watching their flocks on the hillslope because it was the lambing season. Once, a shepherd led his flock right through our group as we sat there on the bedrock. That’s the closest to the real Christmas as you can get.

We sometimes had tours sponsored by BYU during the Christmas season, but we usually let them go to Bethlehem on Christmas eve by themselves. It was so very crowded that one had to wade through people. One year, I decided to go and to bring my family with me. Because of the crowds, they wouldn’t let busses into town, so we had to get off the bus and walk into town in some of the bitterest cold air I’ve experienced (and I’m from North Dakota!). By the time we got to Manger Square, the large open area with the two churches at the east end and shops on the other sides, there was a huge crowd. Two different choirs were singing, one at the east end of the square, one at the west, atop wooden platforms erected for that purpose. Every year, dozens of choirs from throughout the Christian world come to sing in Manager Square on Christmas eve.

The two churches at the east end of the square are the Basilica of the Nativity, a medieval church constructed atop the earlier fourth-century church (of which the pillars and the mosaic floor remain). Many people go into the church on Christmas eve, but since we had been there many times before, we passed on that experience. The Grotto of the Nativity, a natural cave, lies beneath the altars at the east end of the church. But it extends to the north so that it is also beneath St. Catherine’s (Catholic) Church. Midnight mass is held in St. Catherine’s, but it’s very crowded, so most people can’t get in. The Basilica of the Nativity is shared by the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Orthodox churches, though the Greek Orthodox control most of the building. Some years ago, the Greek Orthodox priests had been drinking wine and the Roman Catholic priests had been drinking beer, and they got into a fight, throwing bottles at each other until the Israeli soldiers (who regularly patrol Bethlehem during Christmas Eve) broke it up.

Because there are so few Christians in the Jerusalem area (some Arabs, others Europeans and Americans), the Israeli government provides free Christmas trees to anyone who wants to pick one up. One year, close to Christmas, someone in our village threw a bomb under a tourist bus parked on the road below our house in al-Ayzariah (ancient Bethany; the name al-Ayzariyah comes from the name Eliezer, which became Lazarus in the Greek New Testament). Israeli troops sealed off the village and erected searchlights across the valley in the village of Abu Dees (where we had lived for about a year) to light up our village. They then began a house-to-house search. Two armed Israeli soldiers came to our house and were delighted that I spoke to them in Hebrew instead of Arabic. They were very polite, but went room to room to check for any terrorists who might be hiding there. They missed the katusha rockets hidden under our bed (just kidding; but they did only a cursory search). But I don’t think that a cache of rockets or other weaponry could have fascinated them more than our Christmas tree. They had never seen anything like it and examined it closely, not for weapons, but for its beauty, while I answered their questions–again, not about weapons, but about the tree and Christmas and our beliefs in Jesus as the Messiah. They had arrived at the front door with scowls on their faces but left by the back door with the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on Israeli faces.

Having spent some eight years meeting on “Mormon Hill,” I can tell you a bit about how things were during the early part of April, when Christ was born. The weather is pleasant. No rain, no snow, this being the beginning of the dry season that lasts through October. The sky is clear, and with only the dim lights of Bethlehem across the valley, we can see an uncounted number of stars. Shepherds are guarding their flocks of sheep on all the hillsides, since they are still covered with enough grass from the winter growth and since the valleys had already been planted with wheat and barley during the December lull between the former and the latter rains. (“Shepherd’s field” is a myth based on a misunderstanding of the term “field,” which originally meant “outdoors.”) If you sit silently, you can hear the bells tied around the larger rams in the flocks. Some of them ring from near, others more faintly from distant hillslopes. Otherwise, there is no sound unless someone speaks. The shepherds are bringing their flocks to the sheepcotes, comprised of natural caves in the low limestone cliffs around which walls of loose field stones have been built. Here, they will keep vigil to make sure the ewes do not lose any of their lambs. It is a time of new life, a time of peace. I can’t think of a better time for the Prince of Peace to be born and bring the promise of eternal life. I could never sit in this place without tears welling up in my eyes, as they are doing now as I write these words.

The great thing is that I can carry such memories with me even in the midst of what has become the biggest commercial holiday in the U.S. I look for things that can remind me of the first Christmas. As I walk through the malls and along the sidewalks, the crowds remind me of the crowds I encountered at Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, and of the crowds that must have flocked into the town some 2000 years ago, so numerous that there was no room in the inn. The packages carried by people in the crowd bring to mind the gifts brought to Christ by the wise men and of God’s gift to us. The music that fills the malls brings images of the angelic choir who sang praises to God as the shepherds watched on in amazement. I see that same amazement in the faces of children as they gaze at the storefront displays and the decorations that fill the streets and the stores. Somehow, the commercialism seems unimportant as my mind drifts back to that first Christmas.

(Please pardon the nostalgia.)