Word: bethlehem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...appears on TIME'S first gatefold cover picture, it symbolizes not only the spirit of the season, along with Christmas cards and Santa's sleigh bells, but also a growing resurgence of religion and worship wherever men gather at Christmastide, be it in Bethlehem or Bogotá, North Viet Nam or North Hollywood, Calif...
...hill through olive groves, past herds of goat and sheep, come the worshipers on Christmas Eve to the quiet Judean town. Peasants walk to Bethlehem wearing medieval costumes, silk-hatted diplomats swirl into Manger Square in black limousines. And in entering the Church of the Nativity, all bend low to pass through the tiny door called The Needle...
...mechanical crèches, including that of the local St. Vincent de Paul Society in Beirut, Lebanon, which is 35 ft. by 23 ft., with foot-high Wise Men, shepherds, animals moving in opposite directions against a papier-mâché background of Judea. Overhead, the Star of Bethlehem and angels wheel through the sky, real rain falls, water turns a mill wheel, and on a silken coverlet a Christ child (wired for six volts) raises his head and opens his blue eyes...
Wise Men & Gifts. Long before the date of Christmas was fixed in the calendar (by Pope Julius I in the middle of the 4th century), the cave or stable in Bethlehem had been an object of veneration. St. Justin Martyr mentioned the present Grotto of the Nativity as early as 155; a century later, Origen discussed the authenticity of the site (even Christianity's enemies, he said, admitted it). The manger scene-with the Wise Men from Matthew and the shepherds from Luke-is one of the oldest Christian traditions. It is also the easiest to dramatize. Canticles...
...Second Bethlehem. After the elements of the Nativity scene were established, the first recorded real crèche was made in 1223 by St. Francis of Assisi. Christmas had always been for him the "Feast of Feasts" when "God condescended to be fed by human love." In the church at the town of Greccio, three years before he died, St. Francis preached before a manger filled with hay, beside which stood an ox and an ass. Wrote an early biographer, Thomas of Celano: "Greccio was transformed almost into a second Bethlehem, and that wonderful night seemed like the fullest...