Jalileh Awad Kheir is part of a seven-woman singing group that aims to revive and safeguard Palestinian song. A widow who is more than 80 years old, she goes daily to the Elderly Day Care Center in Beit Sahour, where she, like many other clients, receive medical and social services, as well as a hot meal. While the center's services are necessary, what she enjoys most is being with other people.

Aid to the Aged - known as ATTA for short - is dedicated to improving the lives of elderly people in Palestine, who suffer isolation and loneliness, as do elderly people everywhere. But the situation in Palestine is compounded by the lack of government services and by job loss, the exodus of young people and the tumultuous political situation which often separates families.

 

Photo courtesy of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, www.elcjhl.org/cong/bethlehem.

The Emperor Stained Glass Factory in Germany produced windows for churches across the earth. But few remain intact; most have broken panels here and there, or a missing window.

The story told by the windows is a familiar one to Christians and the one you might expect in Bethlehem. The shepherds in the fields, the family huddled around its baby boy and the angel, surrounded by radiant light, arms raised, singing alleluias and promising peace.

Peace is a message that the congregation of 220 - led by Bethlehem native, Pastor Mitri Raheb - has taken to heart. And maybe more insightfully, they've taken to heart the awareness that peace often happens quietly. After all, most of the city - and even the soldiers on guard - slept through the hubbub created by the Heavenly Host that night so long ago.

Taleen Giacaman plays outside her father's shop in Manger Square, Il Bambino, with nativity figurines that are just her size. The shop features nativity collections in all sizes and all styles. Photo by Carol Hylkema

Creating Nativities
is Giacaman
Family Heritage

 

by Alexa Smith

Twenty-five-year-old Rami Giacaman is a woodcarver. It was probably inevitable.

His father, Ibrahim, and his uncle, Robert, followed their father, Salem, into the family business, a shop crammed from floor-to-ceiling with olive wood figurines of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, shepherds, and with nativity stables from simple sheds to more ornate ones.

The history of the store is reflected in the factory name, simply called Salem Giacaman Sons.

But the actual carving happens on a side street, about five minutes from the Manger Square shop and just a few blocks beyond Bethlehem's most famous site, the Church of the Nativity. The factory is where craftsmen gather and cut the figures out of wood.

The olive wood is dried for three years. Then machines shape the general outlines of the bodies of Mary, Joseph, Jesus and all the other religious figures. Each detail is then done by hand: Mary's dress. Joseph's staff. The infant in the straw. The hoofs of the donkey that kneels nearby. The hands of the shepherd. The closed eyes of the sleeping lamb. 

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by Alexa Smith

Gene Washchuk will tell you that he's awfully proud of the olive wood nativity that sits in his living room every Christmas season; so proud, he's bought another for his daughter's wedding shower.

It will be, he thinks, a family heirloom, passed down from grandchildren to great-grandchildren.

But he bought it because it is gorgeous, with a contemporary look. It has none of the Renaissance fluff.

"Well, it really is beautiful," he says during an interview in his retirement home in Venice, Fla., describing the smoothness of the multi-grained olive wood that, he heard, grows near Bethlehem. "It supports people in need, and, it is the kind of thing that is going to last a long, long time."

That's a satisfying thought.

Jane Stockton, too, is buying nativities. The first went to her son when he married in 1994. Last year, she bought her second son his own set. She likes the idea that there will be a Christian image in her children's home and in their children's homes for a long time. "I really thought of it as something to pass down. They're really works of art...How could someone not love these things? They're just beautiful."

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