Israel Welcomes 40,000 Christian Pilgrims This Christmas
Israel’s “Ministry of Tourism is preparing to welcome an estimated 130,000 visitors this December, including about 40,000 Christian pilgrims expected to celebrate Christmas at holy sites across the country.”
As the countdown to Christmas begins in earnest, Israel is bracing to host around 40,000 Christian pilgrims. Israel’s Ynetnews reported that the country’s “Ministry of Tourism is preparing to welcome an estimated 130,000 visitors this December, including about 40,000 Christian pilgrims expected to celebrate Christmas at holy sites across the country.”
With relative calm returning to the region following President Trump’s Gaza deal, Christmas celebrations were underway in full swing in the Holy Land. The broadcaster CBN noted earlier this month that “in Jerusalem’s Old City, Christmas celebrations are picking up after two years of war.” Most of the pilgrims will be heading to holy sites in Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.
Christmas in Israel.
The only country in the Middle East that you will see this. pic.twitter.com/zPT1j9XwKp
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) December 6, 2025
Airline data also suggest a rise in the number of tourists and pilgrims visiting the Holy Land around Christmas. “With a ceasefire in place, airlines – and travellers – are slowly returning to Israel,” The Telegraph (UK) noted last Wednesday. “Passenger data from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport suggests that [tourists are returning to Israel]. This summer passenger numbers reached their highest levels since October 2023. British travellers are among those returning: UK visitors are up ten per cent in one year.”
Meanwhile, in the real world, this is the Christmas market in Nazareth, Israel ⬇️ https://t.co/Yx9P5lX39z pic.twitter.com/1Tddsfeoln
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) December 14, 2025
The Israeli news outlet Ynetnews reported:
With the end of the war in Gaza and the return of international flights to Israel, the Ministry of Tourism is preparing to welcome an estimated 130,000 visitors this December, including about 40,000 Christian pilgrims expected to celebrate Christmas at holy sites across the country.
As part of its holiday preparations, the ministry has invested more than 600,000 shekels ($160,000) in upgrades to infrastructure and festive decorations in Nazareth, a key destination for Christian tourism. The enhancements include lighting displays, fireworks and other seasonal installations. An additional 250,000 shekels ($67,000) was allocated for marketing Christmas events aimed at both international and domestic tourists.
Nazareth’s annual Christmas processions are among the most prominent events for religious tourism in Israel. The ministry, through a government-backed development company, is also organizing a Christmas market in the Courtyard of the Knights’ Halls in the Old City of Acre.
The Ministry of Tourism maintains ongoing ties with Christian leaders in Israel. Ahead of the holiday, Tourism Ministry Director-General Michael Izhakov and Deputy Director-General for Tourism Experience Rakefet Levy led a delegation to meet senior clergy from various denominations, offering holiday greetings and presenting gifts.
In Israel, Christmas lights shine, Hanukkah candles glow, and people of every faith celebrate side by side – a vibrant, strong, unstoppable nation. pic.twitter.com/ASmwX0sd9A
— נועה מגיד | Noa magid (@NoaMagid) December 20, 2025
While Israeli security services remain vigilant during the holiday season, this year’s Christmas was again marred by Palestinian attacks on Christians. A church compound and a Christmas tree were set on fire in the Palestinian Authority-held city of Jenin. “The Christmas tree and Nativity Grotto at the Holy Redeemer Church of Jenin in the West Bank were destroyed in an arson attack early Monday, at approximately 3:00 a.m.” local time, the Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday.
Holy Redeemer Church in Jenin’s Christmas tree destroyed in arson attack. Under the Palestinian Authority, there is growing hostility toward Christians.
Attacks on Christians, their sites & symbols are unacceptable at all times. Even more so, as we approach Christmas this week. pic.twitter.com/neiDCVA0Z4
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) December 23, 2025
While Christianity thrives in Israel, the population of fellow believers continues to decline in the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, demographic data shows. In the city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, Christians have gone from 86% in the 1950s to merely 12% of the total population. In Nazareth, where Christ once lived and preached, the Christian community has declined from 80% to 20% in roughly the same period.
Israeli police meet with heads of churches and Christian denominations in Jerusalem, ahead of the Christmas holiday to ensure their security as they celebrate freely and publicly as always at this time of year. Whereas in other parts of the Middle East, Christians are persecuted,… pic.twitter.com/Gw2nR5N54Q
— Michael Dickson (@michaeldickson) December 23, 2025
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Comments
Questions not contemplated in this story:
1) What are these “Palestinians” that are mentioned?
2) If the population of the three cities shows a deteriorating proportion of Christians, what group is responsible for an increasing proportion?
3) Is there a common denominator between questions 1 and 2?
The so-called Palestinians attacks are basically Islamic-inspired. But since media reports I have to rely on don’t say that, it poses a limit on what I can say
The Palestinians are Arab-Muslims living in Israel that do not recognize Israel. Arab-Israelis are the same group that accept Israel as their country.
There is no increasing proportion of Christians, as they are choosing to emigrate to western nations.
No, that is not the distinction. Most Arab-Israelis reject Israel just as much as the “Palestinians” do, and would love to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.
The distinction between them is simply that Arab-Israelis live inside the boundaries of the State of Israel, and therefore have Israeli citizenship and all the benefits that come with it. “Palestinians” are members of the same group who live outside Israel’s boundaries, and therefore are not Israeli citizens and don’t get those benefits.
As for Christians, there’s some emigration, but also significant immigration. Their proportion of the total Israeli population has declined not because their numbers have, but because there has been massive Jewish immigration.
I took a Christian tour of Israel in May of 2023 which included trips to Nazareth and Bethlehem. We traveled all over the country including the Golan Heights, the borders with Syria and Lebanon, Masada and much of the West Bank including lunch in Jerico. Many of the Christians we spoke to in the West Bank said that their children would be leaving and they expected the number of Christians there to continue to decline.
For those of you who haven’t been there are some interesting surprises for Western tourists. If you visit the Temple Mount and Western wall the security entering the site are Israeli. The guards at mount itself are Jordanian. Most of the water from the Jordan river as it flows from the Sea of Galilee is used by the nation of Jordan (not Israel). Israel uses water from the Mediterranean processed through a desalination process.
Even then Hamas was occasionally firing rockets into communities in Israel, but I would never have imagined the horror of Oct 7 just a few months later.
“While Christianity thrives in Israel”
1.8% is thriving.
Pew Research said that Christians were 2% I. Israel in 2015.
Google says “In 1958, Christians made up approximately 2.3%”
In 1922, Christians made up about 9.5% to 9.6% of the population in the British Mandate of Palestine.
Thriving… rather they persist.
Yes, it is thriving. The number of Christians is constantly increasing, not declining. It takes about ten seconds’ thought to make it obvious that the percentages you cite, even if true, are completely irrelevant.
And you are already established on this forum as a known antisemite. Go to Hell.
Go away.
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1997426164210536735/photo/1
Click on the link mentioned in the story and pasted above, you will see the Christians in Israel increased 414% while in the West Bank and Gaza they are down 12 % and 50% respectively from 1950 to 2020
Ah, but Thane’s statistical sleight of hand is to refer, not to the quintupling of the actual numbers of Christians in Israel, but to the decline of the percentage of the total population that is Christian.
And of course he refers to 1922 numbers for the entire Mandate, which includes the Territories.
The community notes on X about that top photo say that tree is in Bethlehem, which is in the Palestinian Territory, not Israel proper.
They also show photos from Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq with public Christmas tree lighting ceremonies.
So while Christians are discriminated against, they are allowed to have their symbols and ceremonies in these countries
The caption says Bethlehem. You don’t need to identify the tree. But it’s Israel, not the PA, that promotes Christian tourism to Bethlehem.
And indeed Christians in Bethlehem have suffered the same as in the rest of the “Palestinian” territories. Meanwhile in Nazareth, which is in the state of Israel itself, Christians are thriving.