A CHRISMAS EVE IN BETHLEHEM
O'Reilly, Mary Boyle
A Christmas Eve in Bethlehem By MARY BOYLE O'REILLY (Copyrighted, 1913, Newspaper Enterprise Association) IN Bethlehem on Christinas Bvet Bethlehem in the heart of the Holy Land! The country...
...The ahla and sahla wish he fulfilled in him who wishes it...
...A new born child could not be laid on a floor...
...Iftakar...
...Onion hallat aloina e-baroki (welcome blessing be upon you), he salutes...
...The life of the changeless East passes in procession down the Bethlehem road...
...The West looks on the East not understanding...
...Kvery rabbi of old was an artisan...
...Need I say more...
...How is it the West holds a carpenter must be poor...
...In knee-length tunic with sheepskin coat on shoulder leaning upon his assayah crook, he looks like a living picture from bible history...
...Hillel, Gamalioh, were carpenters and tent makers in the intervals of their studies...
...No need to tell him that the time arrives for watering the flock...
...Below lie the treeless fields of the shepherd kings, just maplike stretches of sun-baked earth...
...A stone of consideration is spread with sheepskin, a gueght of water laid ready...
...As for the manger such mangers are honorable storage troughs, not feeding places for the flock...
...Seating himself with legs tucked under him, for to show the sole of the foot is considered inexplicable rudeness in the stringent etiquet of the East, the old shepherd swept the horizon with his crook...
...Upon my head and eyes I hare heard it told how the wise men saw the star ot Bethlehem in the East...
...Certainly Lazarus had riches—else how came Mary, his sister, by an alabaster box of spikenard, the like of which King Herod gave to Egypt's queen...
...From the city gate a rocky foot path, old as the house of David, leads to the village of the shepherds...
...A dry hot land of sun-baked earth stretches around us, the hillsides painfully terraced by vineyards by walls of unhewn stone...
...In the old days 3,000,000 lived in Galilee—all fish eaters...
...cries the shepherd sternly...
...The country without change1, For aa this Bast was on that day nearly two thousand years ago when Jesus Christ was horn, so it is today...
...Presently he is speaking...
...John Mark had a house...
...Across the good red earth a far-borne angelus bell rings out what an angel of the lord declared...
...A rich man paid for a place in a cave lined with mangers, it having a raised floor...
...At one stride comes the dark...
...Mainnoon afandi...
...The docile sheep graze the sparse hillside pasture quietly, led gently hither and yon by the wether's tinkling bell...
...Still, for a little, Jerusalem is golden...
...I tell Bartholomew I shall come here again Christmas eve to watch with him the rising of the star of the east over the manger...
...In the heart of the Christ-town Is the era-old Church of the Nativity—a shrine reliable and authentic...
...In the market-place a group of slender women in narrow, indigo-blue robes and coin-strung, white veils stand with their great water pots about the public well, From shadowy doorways comes the Insistent "whine-whine" of vibrating hand saws cutting mother of pearl, or a ringing sound of stone house mills grinding the daily meal...
...Is not his trade held in honor amongst us—a craft from which the very high priest might be chosen...
...His soft white skull cap is bound about with an old gold head-shawL Beside him, on the sward, lies a formidable bludgeon from the woods of Bashau, with which a good shepherd defends his flock against attack...
...A carpenter is an Important man—a personage of repute...
...East of Jordan color comes back to the craggy mountains—swift twilight falls in the great forges...
...Also a small striped bag holding smooth sling-stones, food and a crude reed flute...
...Mathew, the tax collector, must have been well to do, for his, great feast was spread in the great shaded court of his house...
...What saying is this of 'the twelve' that they were all 'miserably poor?' Ifaddal...
...The written word is caravanserai...
...One-storied, fiat-roofed houses rise, terrace on terrace, with blind walls turned, to the great inquisitive world...
...Bartholomew wears the flowing white cotton kumboz of a shepherd, over it an abbai, a rain-proof burnous of goafs hair broadly striped brown and white...
...Northward Jerusalem, on its triple hills, glows opalescent...
...It clings, an eyrie of rough stone huts, close to the pale brown hillside...
...Their sale was certain...
...It is decreed that I stay...
...Again...
...Bartholomew Ben Judah has learned of my coming from the abbot, but he waits beside his flock, for December lambs demand constant watchfulness...
...Aba, all the world knows it was they who were in the east—the star to their west...
...Little Bethlehem Is an ancient "city" set upon a hill which cannot he hid...
...Crook laid across shoulders, striped abbai falling square, he gives thanks in the manner of the courteous East...
...It is a caravan-house—a place of safety for caravans...
...AD is as before,"- muses Batholo-mcw, "yet many meanings are missed by them that read The Book—they who do not know the land...
...The large-eyed, nervous sheep lifted their heads in alarm, bleating piteously...
...Why does the great America harbor contempt for the work of the hands...
...A stately sheik with his heavy staff, a frieze of sun-faded camels carrying huge panniers of thorny brushwood for firing, a dozen sedate little donkeys each with a sheeted, veiled woman, brown-faced girls superbly erect under red water pots—all denizens of the cosmopolitan Orient where every man's dress proclaims his religion and his nationality...
...At some little distance Ah Abu Awa, the hireling, offers reverential salutation...
...I answer...
...Is a caravanserai an inn...
...Observe how the West wrongs the East...
...Gravely he takes out his reed flute and pipes a quaint little tune to assure them of his near presence...
...Then I ask, "Will you ride back to the city with me...
...How could fishermen of Galilee be miserably poor...
...This is where I spent my Christmas Eva last year...
...Lazarus owned a house and a costly stone tomb...
...So we know that the keeper offered the young mother his best shelter, gave her the most quiet spot his caravanserai afforded...
...questioned Bartholomew...
...What is it to say the Lord was born in an inn-stable...
...The hireling, sound asleep with a stone for his pillow, wakes and rises...
...It looks like a market Wayfarers bring their own fuel, food, furnishings...
...In days of old it was written: "A good shepherd must be ready to lay down his life for his sheep...
...Ali Abn Awa...
...A cloud, drifting across the bare brown hill set them leaping and plunging in terror...
...Since the days of Joshua the fish of Genesareth were free to whoever cast net...
...There be those who preach—" From out of the valley opposite echoed the yell of a jackal...
Vol. 6 • December 1914 • No. 46
