Home of the first Noel

Each December the shop at York Minster does a roaring trade in gifts illustrating the birth of Jesus.

One of this year's top-selling lines is a seven-piece set of finger puppets. On the right-hand are placed puppets of Joseph, Mary with the infant Jesus, a shepherd and an angel, and on the left hand are puppets of the Three Wise Men.

Outside in York's streets, meanwhile, berobed actors have been performing the world's best-known story for the benefit of Christmas shoppers and across Yorkshire even small churches have created their own nativity concerts. In Eldwick, above the Airedale town of Bingley, for example, on Christmas Eve the play is taken to all corners of the village, complete with donkey.

But 2,000 miles away in the centre of Bethlehem, a small hilltop town six miles to the south of Jerusalem, the biggest nativity scene of all unfolds as the town's population of 30,000 is swollen by 5,000 pilgrims.

The reason they come, of course, is that Jesus was born here, during the reign of Herod the Great and according to some scholars in the year 5BC. In those days the town it was just a farming community of less than 1,000 people on the edge of the Judean desert.

We are all familiar with the story of Joseph travelling with his pregnant wife from Nazareth to Joseph's home town of Bethlehem to comply with the requirements of a census. There are discrepancies in the accounts given by St Luke and St Matthew in the Gospels about what really happened. Other versions suggest that the family already lived here.

Accounts of where the birth took place also vary. The picture which captivates people is the of a manger – a timber hay rack for feeding livestock - in a "lowly cattle shed" being used as a bed where baby Jesus lies wrapped in "swaddling clothes" or blankets tied tightly with strips of bandage-like cloth.

In Bethlehem the existence of the manger is celebrated with names like Manger Square and Manger Street. But some accounts describe the birthplace not as the outbuilding of an inn but a small cave, or grotto, on what was then Bethlehem's outskirts.

Both cattle shed and cave may well be correct, since in this region caves were often annexed by farmers to provide shelter for their livestock. And 2,000 years later, it is a limestone cave which is still the centre of attention in Bethlehem at Christmas, a word which joins the Greek christos meaning the anointed one and the Latin word missa , or holy mass.

A church was built over the cave between 327 and 333 AD, which became the foundation of today's much grander Church of the Nativity and it is outside here that most pilgrims gather on Christmas Eve.

The traditional starting point for them is Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, where a large crowd waits for the taxis and coaches that will take them to Bethlehem along a fairly straight road built by the Romans and along which Jesus himself would have travelled. Others join an official foot procession to Bethlehem.

If it's still daylight, the journey sometimes offers the pilgrims glimpses of everyday life today that look as if they are straight out of the Christmas story. Along the east side of the road, for instance, shepherds can sometimes be seen tending their flocks on scrubby hillsides. And if there are no clouds, as day turns to night the amethyst sky soon fills with bright stars.

But it's on reaching the somewhat intimidating place known as Checkpoint 300 that the modern-day reality of Bethlehem dawns on most people. For since 1995 the town has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority, and in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks by Palestinians the Israelis have put up a 50-foot-high wall, electric fences and military watchtowers.

Checkpoint 300 is the main way into the town, and from there it's another mile or so to Manger Square, the centre of Christmas Eve activity.

Manger Square is small by the standards of most urban squares, but the one compelling reason for this one being so important is the Church of the Nativity, standing on its eastern side.

The grotto said to have been where Jesus was born is two flights of stairs below the church and forms a rough rectangle around 40ft long and 10ft wide. Parts of the rock walls are still evident, but they are mostly covered with masonry or decorative drapes. The cave's roof is black with soot from the candles and oil burners brought by unnumbered pilgrims for two millennia.

The exact place in the grotto where Mary's child is believed to have been born is now marked by an altar, below which is a 14-point star of silver set in marble and illuminated by an arc of silver lamps.

But it's back in the square that most of the action takes place. The scene we all probably picture from childhood is one of a freezing December night. It was most vividly brought to life in Christina Rossetti's Christmas carol In The Bleak Midwinter, with lines like "earth stood hard as iron" and "snow had fallen, snow on snow."

That is part of the romanticised picture of Christmas painted by the Victorians, however. Some scholars actually place Jesus's birth in September, but for us the classic scene of snowy Bethlehem in December is so compelling that many

who go there for the festivities are disappointed the place doesn't resemble one of our Christmas cards.

In reality it rarely snows here, despite being 2,400 feet above sea level – the same height as Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales – although two or three inches did fall in February 2004.

More often than not, Christmas Eve pilgrims find it rainy, overcast or clear, with temperatures hovering a few degrees above freezing.

The people of Bethlehem, of course, do as much as they can to profit from this annual influx.

Coloured lights are strung across streets just as you will find in every shopping centre here. If you want to buy souvenirs such as a manger carved from local

olive wood, you are spoiled for choice. Ceramic or plastic images of the Magi are available in their thousands, as well as gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Then there's the bottles of holy water from the Jordan River and what are claimed to be miraculous, ailment-curing bath salts from the Dead Sea.

In Manger Square a stage is set up for various music groups and singers. Christian of all denominations are evident – Southern Baptists from the USA, Franciscan monks, Scottish Presbyterians, some Yorkshire Methodists – as well as local Christian Arabs.

There's sometimes competition between them for standing room in the square as well as attempts to out-hosanna each other. Increasingly, an unruly element in the crowd has been remarked on.

There are parades of Palestinian Scouts and carol choirs of various nationalities, and an all-ticket midnight mass is said by the Roman Catholic Church and broadcast on TV networks around the world.

Many pilgrims get to join a procession through the holy grotto itself.

But others go off in search of the post office which stays open late. It's so they can have their postcards franked: "Bethlehem December 25.".

YP MAG 24/12/10