Christmas lights are bright and Christmas traditions fill the streets in the town where the Holy Family lived and worked, Yasmeen Mazzawi told PJ Media.
Yasmeen is an Arab Christian from Nazareth and a volunteer medic with Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s emergency services system (read more about MDA’s life-saving work here). After two years of war, Nazareth natives are excited to celebrate the Christmas season, and Yasmeen is happy to see Jews and Christians alike traveling to Northern Israel during the holidays. “This year, Christmas is returning to Nazareth,” she told me.
“I was born in Nazareth, a city deeply rooted … in faith, mystery, and a strong sense of community,” Yasmeen began, recalling how these informed her life from a young age. As Christmas celebrations return “in a special and meaningful way,” she loves “seeing the city come alive again with lights, prayers, families, and visitors, [it] brings a sense of warmth and renewal, especially, you know, after two years of” war.
For two years, as Islamic terror groups attacked — in Northern Israel, Hezbollah regularly fired missiles at civilians — “everything was shut down, no celebrations … nothing, no decorations,” Yasmeen explained. “It was [a] really, really hard time, very hard two years that we had here in Israel.” But always “we remember that Christmas is first and foremost about celebrating the birth of Jesus, whose message is, you know, of love and humility, and that really inspires me personally,” she added.
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Nazareth reignites the magic of Christmas: lights, parades,
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) December 13, 2025
markets, concerts, and giant trees… a must-visit holiday destination.#Nazareth #Christmas2025 #Israel #ChristmasVibes #TravelNews#MiddleEast #News #Tourism #i24newsplus pic.twitter.com/xv4JbYDgLO
I asked her about Christmas traditions in Nazareth. While the holidays in many Western countries focus primarily on material gifts and goodies, Christians in Nazareth always keep Christ at the center. “As we return to celebrate, we have all the time many celebrations, Christmas markets, many performances,” Yasmeen described the festive scene.
There are particularly “performances with singing hymns, going to churches, and I think this is the core of Christmas, as I said earlier, is celebrating the birth of Jesus,” Yasmeen insisted earnestly. “This holiday is very important to us as Christians here in Nazareth, mainly as people who live in Nazareth, usually we go to elderly people, especially this season. We visit elderly people, we visit kids with special needs. We go to families in need. We try to help as much as we can [the] people around us.”
🎄WATCH: Middle East’s largest Christmas tree lit in Nazareth
— Jewish News Syndicate (@JNS_org) December 16, 2025
(video in article)
▸https://t.co/hWlr7485EZ
📸Nazareth Xmas tree 2020 / Flash90 pic.twitter.com/ctaNdEzJ0m
While this Christmas is more hopeful than it has been in several years, “there are many poor people around and people who need support,” she said. “So we try to support as much as we can during this season. So these are the main traditions that we do during December.”
I think we here in America could benefit from borrowing these traditions both in December leading up to Christmas Day and in the Christmas season following December 25. Visit the sick, the needy, and the elderly, and make church and religious celebrations the centerpiece of your Christmas festivities.
Check back here on PJ Media for Yasmeen Mazzawi’s stories of Israel at war and her reflections on the true meaning of Christmas in the land of Christ’s birth.
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