Jerusalem Lacks Christmas Presence

JERUSALEM — Kevin McInerney and Graham Crowe stood braced against a chill wind outside the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher, looking wistful.

It was just a few days before Christmas in this city so holy to Christians around the world, but there was hardly a sign of the blessed event, the young Irishmen noted glumly. No holiday lights or decorations, no Christmas music on the radio, and only a small artificial tree in the lobby of their East Jerusalem hotel.

“It’s hard for us to believe it’s actually Christmas,” said McInerney, 21, who was visiting Jerusalem with Crowe and other soldiers on a brief leave from their duties with the U.N. force in Lebanon. “It’s a very big time of year for us at home, but you hardly feel it at all around here.”

Such is the elusive nature of Christmas in the Holy Land, an all but forgotten holiday in a Jewish state where Christians make up less than 3% of the population. While the atmosphere in American and European cities is full of holiday cheer at this time of year, public reminders of Christmas are nearly nonexistent and can even be oddly incongruous in the land where tradition holds that it all began.

There are positive aspects to this situation.

Unexposed to the intensely commercial aspects of Christmas elsewhere, children are less likely to beg for advertised toys.

The aisles at Tel Aviv’s Toys R Us, unlike those in its sister stores almost anywhere else, are remarkably empty in the days before Christmas. And each year, the Jewish National Fund gives away Christmas trees--typically spindly pines akin to Charlie Brown’s, but trees nonetheless--to resident Christians.

Inside the many churches in Israel that mark sites sacred to Christians, the faithful celebrate the holiday with services, songs and prayers made more meaningful by the fact that they are taking place here.

But for the less observant Christian, who may rely on tinny jingles, stockings in store windows and brightly lighted streets to stir that Christmasy feeling, the season can be a trifle lonely.

This week, an American woman stood gazing at red and green ornaments, candles and wrapping paper inside one of the few stores that sell such items in Jerusalem’s Old City.

“I’m not really shopping,” she confided. “I just like coming in here to look at all the Christmas things. You start to miss them here.”

Throughout the holiday period, predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem remains its usual self: historic, classic, unadorned--with one exception. The YMCA, a landmark building across the street from the King David Hotel, decorates its soaring bell tower with two strands of Christmas lights dangling from opposite sides.

“We’ve decided that some institution in Jerusalem has to make a statement that Christmas is here,” said Mike Bussey, director general of the West Jerusalem Y. “You have to laugh, really, when you compare our two straggly lines of lightbulbs to the extravaganzas in the States, but the message is that there is a Christmas presence here.”

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But another Christmas display has fueled controversy this year in West Jerusalem.

Morris Tehrani, the owner of Happening, a popular chain of gift stores, decided this month to devote the entire front window of his shop on the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall to Christmas, instead of just a third of it as in years past.

Within two weeks, the staff had received so many complaints from angry customers that he removed the display.

Tehrani, an Iranian-born Jew, said many of his Jewish customers thought it was provocative to have a shop window celebrating Christmas in the heart of West Jerusalem.

“We had just thought it was something fun,” he said, noting that the display had also helped draw shoppers inside to his modest selection of Christmas gift items.

“But people were calling to say ‘Shame on you!’ ”