CBNNews.com - Approximately 65,000 tourists are expected to visit Bethlehem this Christmas season.
One of the main attractions besides being the birthplace of our Lord Jesus is a four-story Christmas tree.
Click on the media player for a Newswatch clip on the site.
Locals lit the tree during a ceremony held in Manger Square, which faces the Church of the Nativity.
Tourists can also stroll through streets under tinsel and lights shaped like bells.
This year, Bethlehem is expected to host the largest amount of tourists in seven years.
The trend reflects an overall increase of tourism to the holy town.
From January to October of this year, 340,000 tourists visited Bethlehem from Israel. Israel's Tourism Ministry reports that this dwarfs last year's tally, which registered 200,000 making the trip to the Christ's birthplace.
In all, 2.3 million tourists are expected to visit Israel this year, which is second only to 2000, when 2.7 traveled to the Holy Land.
Oringial Source

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By Gary Lane
Watch Low Ban CBNNews.com - BETHLEHEM - Each day, children around the world make their way to school. Many are eager to learn how to read and write and become productive members of their societies.
In contrast, in the Palestinian territories, recent kindergarten graduates - most no more than 5 years old - were demonstrating what they had been taught.
The children, dressed in battle fatigues and carrying toy automatic rifles, chanted their replies to the instructor:
"What is your path?" They were asked. "Jihad," they answered. "What is your most lofty aspiration?" "Death for the sake of allah," they replied.
Because of the aggressive spread of extremist Islamic ideas like this, thousands of Palestinian Christians have fled Palestinian-controlled areas like Bethlehem.
Bethlehem is the birthplace of Christ and was once a Christian city. But today, Christians are only about 10 to 15 percent of the population here. Some observers say that if the mass exodus continues, within another generation it could become a city of Christian holy sites without any Christian residents.
Justice Weiner of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs believes that is happening. He has spent years investigating persecution and the exodus of Christians ...   more »

By ERIC TALMADGE,AP
Warren Nobuaki Iwatake's family has seen more than its share of calamity.
When he was still a child his father was lost at sea off Hawaii. With no breadwinner, his family was forced to move to Japan, where Iwatake was drafted during the war. He lost a brother when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. 
Katsumi Kasahara, AP Warren Nobuaki Iwatake and his family have enjoyed the Yuletide glow of the same Christmas tree for the past 70 years. Iwatake and the tree both survived World War II and the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
But through it all one thing has remained constant.
The tree.
His parents bought it in 1937, and his family has brought it out every Christmas since, without fail, even when that meant risking arrest.
"This tree was a shining light, because it was a symbol of unity in my family," Iwatake said as he and his wife put the final touches on the frail, 3-foot-tall heirloom that is, once again this year, the centerpiece of their small, neatly kept apartment in Tokyo.
"We have put this tree up every year for 70 years."
Though he considers himself Buddhist, Iwatake was raised in a ...   more »

This essay was written in January 1999 and was originally titled, "Caroline My Valentine." It was written in the dialectical manner of Socrates, in quasi-poetical verse and is basically a short narrative of how the Lord used me to lead my sister-in-law (Caroline) to become a Christian.
During this period, Caroline had planned on doing two terrible deeds just as soon as she saw her relatives one last time. First, she planned on buying a gun to murder her then husband who was mercilessly abusing her. Next, she planned to turn the gun on herself and commit suicide. …
Fortunately, God had other plans.
Part I – Caroline My Valentine
On the eve before Valentine's Day, the night was transfixed. The celestial audience is in their place. Caroline My Valentine and I conversed on the green couch as we had many, many times before, but something was wrong. Something was dreadfully amiss.
You must understand dear reader that Caroline My Valentine had come for a week-long visit. This night, her heart was very heavy – exceedingly burdensome. Life was crushing her to death!
Caroline My Valentine wanted to die this night. She tried to die – she really did. She ...   more »

'One thing led to another and result was some decorations prohibited'
Less than one day after WND reported on the imposition of a ban on references to "Christmas" at a Midwest university, the school's president has taken steps to fix the problem.
"I am very pleased by the prompt actions of President John Hays to resolve the Christmas controversy," said Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, an advocacy law firm that alleged illegal censorship at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Okla.
"His leadership in resolving the controversy of Christmas and the general guidelines he has set forth regarding the appropriate way a state school and its employees may acknowledge and celebrate Christmas serves as an example for others to follow," Staver said. "Christmas is a wonderful time of the year, and it can and should be enjoyed by all."
Hays insisted the university does not have a policy that bans the word 'Christmas' or Christmas decorations.
"However," he wrote in a statemetn, "some supervisors or department leaders within the university who meant well may have suggested to employees that caution should be taken with respect to Christmas decorations.
"One thing led to another," he continued, "and ...   more »

by Gary Stearman  
Have you lost the Christmas spirit? These days, it’s easy to do. Easy money and the incessant secular drive toward profit can easily drown out the spiritual majesty that recalls the birth of the Messiah. His gift to humanity disappears in a myriad of replicas, each meant to convey the meaning of the real thing, but cheap by comparison.
It’s that season again. The rush is on. The global machine is in high gear. Electronic credits and debits hum through the lines at record speed. For at least the last two months, shipments of toys, clothes, appliances, machines, gadgets, goodies, widgets, doodads and special prizes and surprises have been generated by the millions. The quest for that perfect Christmas gift rises to peak importance.
Motivated by the very human urge to love and be loved, we plot, plan and calculate. We search, research and investigate. We devote time, energy and planning to make Christmas the perfect day. Our motive for all this activity and expenditure may be sterling and flawless, born of the desire to bestow the favor of the season upon the deserving recipient. Or it may be a flawed attempt to compensate for wrongs ...   more »

Tom Coyne - Associated Press Writer 
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - It's long been a puzzle for Christian astronomers, and now a professor from the University of Notre Dame thinks he has it figured out - almost, anyway.
His quest: discovering just what "the star in the East" was that led wise men to travel to Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
As a theoretical astrophysicist, Grant Mathews had hoped the answer would be spectacular - something like a supernova. But two years of research have led him to a more ordinary conclusion. The heavenly sign around the time of the birth of Jesus Christ was likely an unusual alignment of planets, the sun and the moon.
Not a lot was written about the star in the Bible. In the Gospel of Matthew it says: "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him."
The star, though, has long been immortalized in Christmas songs, plays and movies. Astronomers, theologians and historians for hundreds of years have been trying to determine exactly which star might have inspired the biblical writing. German astronomer Johannes Kepler proposed in 1604 ...   more »

OKLAHOMA CITY - Two city employees who claim they were forced to remove Christian-themed decorations from their Oklahoma City office and breakroom have put the items back on display while a legal battle continues over whether their rights were violated.
The dispute began after City Manager Jim Couch sent a memo in November that said Nativity scenes, crosses, angels, cherubs and other religious items should not be displayed in government offices in order to "maintain neutrality" and avoid promoting one religion over another.
Couch sent a clarifying memo this week saying the original memo only pertained to public spaces at city buildings and not decorations in employees' personal workspaces. But lawyers for the two employees say that doesn't go far enough to protect religious expression, so the lawsuit will continue.
Original Source

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CHARLOTTETOWN -- The owner of a Charlottetown bookstore that sells religious material is frustrated by the CBC's refusal to air his advertisement.
Roger May owns and operates Maritime Christian Bookstore with his wife. He said the CBC's reasoning for rejecting the ad doesn't make sense.
Mr. May said yesterday he was told that the final phrase in the proposed advertisement - "What goes into a mind, comes out in a life" - goes against CBC advertising standards.
The broadcaster's policy states that advocacy advertisements for or on behalf of religious organizations must not proselytize or promote religious ideologies or doctrines.
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Go to the National section
 Mr. May said the phrase is a general statement rather than a reference to any specific religion, or to religion at all.
"The ad doesn't say, 'If you don't go to church, you are all going to hell,' " he said.
Jeff ...   more »