This archive report was first published on 25 December 2019.
On Christmas Eve, thousands of Palestinians and foreigners gathered in the biblical town of Bethlehem, revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
At midnight, bells rang out throughout the town, before Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the most senior Roman Catholic official in the Middle East, led hymns and said prayers.
"At Christmas all the world looks to us, to Bethlehem," he said.
"Special greetings to our brothers and sisters in Gaza, with whom I celebrated Christmas two days ago," he added.
Earlier in the evening, a few thousand people watched in the winter sun as Palestinian scouts paraded in front of a giant Christmas tree.
"The church is beautiful and it puts what we know in the Bible (in) place," said Laneda, an American tourist visiting the site.
Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem were bolstered by the return of a wooden fragment believed to be from the manger of Jesus.
"We venerate the relic because (it) reminds us of the mystery of incarnation, to the fact that the son of God was born of Mary in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago," said Francesco Patton, chief custodian for the Holy Land.
