Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is known as the “Christmas City” and before the Thanksgiving turkey is even cold, Christmas in Bethlehem immediately kicks into high gear.
There are Christmas carols playing in green, plastic audio boxes in the tree planters along Main Street; holiday cops riding horses, wearing jaunty English top hats; and white, horse drawn carriages (like in Central Park) clip-clopping along Main Street. There are illuminated candles and hundreds of decorated trees inside and out. It’s full-on Christmas wherever you look.
They have even created the Christkindlmarkt, a sprawling German-style holiday market under a sprawling circus tent, right next to the old Bethlehem Steel Stacks.
Look, every town loves to celebrate Christmas. But I have never seen any place on earth that takes Christmas so seriously as Bethlehem. It’s a whole different level of the game and the Bethlehemites are real pros.
On the day after Thanksgiving it looked, felt, and sounded like Christmas Eve.
Inna and I were dubious going in, but it didn’t take long before the “HO! HO! HO!” took over and we started humming carols with abandon.
The whole holiday show was really quite remarkable — dare I say, MAGICAL.
We started our first day in Bethlehem at the visitor center/museum/tour center/gift shop/information center on Main Street where the friendly ladies answered all our questions, offered suggestions on fun things to do, and helped us book a Christmas City Stroll with a friendly costumed guide named Ted who led us through Pennsylvania’s first historic district.
William Penn acquired the Lehigh Valley area where Bethlehem sits from the local Indians through a “walking purchase” — the distance a man could walk in a day, which was normally about thirty miles. But Penn played fast and loose with the rules by hiring pro runners, so the Indians got royally screwed, and that’s why they sided with the French during the French and Indian War. Karma!
The whole Bethlehem Christmas extravaganza began in 1741 when German Count Zinzendorf stayed with the Moravians in their communal log cabin on Christmas Eve. He suggested they celebrate the holiday with a Love Feast.
According to the United Methodist Church website: “The Love Feast, or Agape Meal, is a Christian fellowship meal recalling the meals Jesus shared with disciples during his ministry and expressing the koinonia (community, sharing, fellowship) enjoyed by the family of Christ. Although its origins in the early church are closely interconnected with the origins of the Lord’s Supper, the two services became quite distinct and should not be confused with each other. While the Lord’s Supper has been practically universal among Christians throughout church history, the Love Feast has appeared only at certain times and among certain denominations. The modern history of the Love Feast began when Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians in Germany introduced a service of sharing food, prayer, religious conversation, and hymns in 1727.”
Count Z was so captivated by all of the Moravians living happily together in harmony with their animals that he decided on the spur of the moment to christen the place Bethlehem. Counts and tyrants apparently get to do that sort of thing.
The first communal home in Bethlehem became the Golden Eagle Inn in 1823. The grand Bethlehem Hotel, the city’s crown jewel on Main Street, was built in 1920 where the Golden Eagle had once stood. The hotel was the dream of the Grace family, who controlled Bethlehem Steel and wanted to provide five star luxury for the industrial titans who came to town to do business. It’s pure Manhattan.
On December 7, 1937, Marion Grace, the wife of the President of Bethlehem Steel, put Bethlehem on the map by convincing the U.S. Postal Service to commission a commemorative stamp “Bethlehem the Christmas City”. Then she contacted post offices around the country, telling them they should use the stamps for all Christmas cards, to make it look like they had been postmarked from the holy city of Bethlehem. From that time on, Bethlehem was officially America’s “Christmas City”.
Next, the indomitable Mrs. Grace convinced the Mayor and Council to take the entire 22 blocks of the old city and illuminate them with electric lights. And to help add some catchy music to her marketing campaign, she decreed that the Christmas carol “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” would forevermore be the town’s official theme song.
The lights and festivities were a huge hit and drew people from near and far like moths to a Christmas candle. But by the sixties, the whole thing had gotten so out of hand the city took down the lights. The Bethlehemites had become overwhelmed by the three T’s: traffic, tourists, and trash, and they didn’t turn the lights back on again until the eighties under a more orchestrated system of transportation and access. It’s still pretty out of control, if you ask me.
But the light that outshines all others has always been the City Star, or Star of Bethlehem, a 91-feet-tall by 53-feet-wide electric light in the shape of a star that was erected atop the north face of South Mountain in 1937. These days it has LED lights and can be seen from twenty miles away. And they light it every night, not just during Christmas, making it the town’s shining symbol year round.
The whole star business can get a bit confusing because there is the Bethlehem Star and then there’s the even more famous Moravian Star which has an interesting origin story, dating back to the 1830’s. It accidentally came about as a German geometry project and became so popular as a teaching tool that it became a standard part of the German engineering curriculum. And it eventually caught on commercially when an enterprising German named Harry Verbeek started making them as decorative ornaments at Christmas. The classic Moravian Star has 26 points.
All sorts of Christmas traditions began in Bethlehem.
The most obvious example would be the solitary white candles in every window. This popular Protestant tradition has become standard Christmas fare throughout America. The candles are meant to symbolize that Christ lives in every room of the home.
And then there are the beeswax candles used by the Moravians at Christmas. Beeswax is the purest wax and is meant to symbolize the purity of Christ. And the little red ribbons at the candle’s base represent the blood of Jesus. The cute little four-inch candles are a reminder that Jesús burns in the hearts of everyone.
And then there’s the Putz (pronounced poots), and not to be confused with the Yiddish word for schmuck. The Moravian Christmas Putz is a traditional Christmas display big enough to cover a small stage, featuring illuminated, hand-carved and painted figurines, animals, and buildings, telling the Nativity Story. The putz is the bedrock cornerstone of a Bethlehem Christmas and all six of the Moravian churches showcase their own special version of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, complete with fresh sphagnum moss and lichen-covered stones gathered from the nearby Appalachian Mountains.
The Christmas tree is a German tradition. According to legend, Martin Luther decorated the first tree to bring color and fragrance inside his home in Wittenberg, in the Saxony region of Germny, where the Moravians fled after their leader John Huss was executed.
And in Bethlehem the Christmas tree rules. There’s the City Tree, and the Mayor gets a tree, and the street lamps are adorned with little trees, and places like the Bethlehem Hotel feature elaborately-decorated trees that will take your breath away. It’s safe to say that you can’t swing a cat anywhere in town without hitting a Christmas tree.
Gemein House, the original log home for all of the Moravians in Bethlehem, is now a very interesting museum. At Christmas time it showcases several glorious Christmas trees decorated by world famous designers, including the Gucci Tree on the second floor.
Bethlehem is one of those towns that you probably have heard of but never visited. And if you are a bit jaded like me and think Christmas has turned into a forced commercial march from Halloween ’til New Years, accompanied by slushy carols and insipid sentimentality, then break out of your holiday funk and visit Bethlehem some time in December. It’s bound to fill you with joy and goodwill to all.
Like the old song says: O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
