There was a dry, cold wind blowing in upon Bethlehem the night of Christ-child's birth. It came from the hard-baked deserts and the barren mountains of Judea and danced into Bethlehem whistling its tune of melancholy and caressing the stable walls with its icy fingers. It was this same wind that caused the shepherds to be huddled around a fire when the angel came to bid them go to Bethlehem; it was this same wind which made the three wise men shield their faces against the cold of the night as they followed the guiding star.

There was a dry, cold wind blowing in upon my city last Christmas eve. It came from the creased valleys and the rounded, sandy hills of the semi-arid desert of south eastern Washington. As it played and darted about the low rooftops of this modern government city, its soft voice was hardly heard above the youthful voices of some three-hundred youngsters formed into a revolving living Christmas tree on the village common. Their cheeks were rosy from the cold wind, and their young voices were pure as the sound of silver bells as they worshiped the living Christ-child in song. There were thousands crowded on the green, which is decorated with a giant fir sprinkled from trunk to top with multicolored lights. Some of the crowd were proud parents; most of them came to hear and watch. Like the wise men and the shepherds they turned their backs to the wind----in order that they might hear Christmas music and know of Christ-child's birth.

Two thousand year ago a cold wind blew upon Bethlehem....

I have been to Judea only in my day dreams and reminiscent wanderings. But I need not to go to Judea, the real Judea, for I have my own Judea in the countryside around me. It is especially during Christmas time that I become more aware of this private Holyland, for the moods and rumblings of the season demand contemplation and creative self expression. This winter desert, which is my Judea, with its stillness, its emptiness, and its subtle beauty, leaves with you the impression that it is divorces from time or place. That is why it makes Christmas seems so near----as if the Christ were born yesterday. Only in southern Palestine, I believe, could I find more in Christmas than I do here in my winter desert.

I can only picture in my mind the wonder and the sublimity of the Judean countryside around Christmas time. Surely it must have been in all its glory when the infant Jews came into the world. But I do have my own Judea for inspiration, and that is so much more than most people find in a lifetime. There is a strange beauty to this, my Judea, a beauty that many people miss; it must be searched for with open eyes, eyes that would find loveliness in all creation. My desert Holyland is flat and rippling with a pale-grey, sandy soil, shot through here and there with veins of purple. It is a rich soil; when turned to water it sings with life and nourishes acres of wheat and fruit orchards. Were these orchards olive trees, like those which grow on the hillsides around Bethlehem, this would be a perfect setting. Without water, the desert's only crops are the gnarled sagebrush and the dry, brittle tumbleweed. Yet, there is even beauty in these: the agonized, twisted branches of the desert sage with its dull-green, bush-like leaves are so ugly that they become beautiful in their ugliness; and what is more fascinating than a tumbleweed town by the wind to go skipping lightly across the desert like a colorless shadow.

There is little snow here around Christmas except for the powdery flakes that lie like a faint whisper on the lazy Horseheaven hills which hunch themselves up from the desert floor. No, it is usually too cold and dry for snow in my Judea. Nevertheless, it is still like Christmas. What is more resplendent than a desert winter sky which has wiped away its troubled look of grey for that of a liquid blue, a blue of such depth and color that it makes the mighty Columbia.

In my Bethlehem there is a quiet, far away feeling during the Yuletide season. It is as if the desert has grasped the city with its gentle fingers and is attempting to smother it in its own bosom. It makes you feel as if you are in another world apart from the New York Citys, the Chicagos, the Bostons. You do not feel the usual pulse of Christmas here. There seems to be no excitement----except for the smaller children. Yet, there is a quiet joy, a rich buoyant feeling. And there is worship....

I like the quiet feeling, though. I think it fits Christmas more than the Christmas most of us know. I like to walk down the streets and feel it all about me. The lighted windows and the decorated yards radiate an inviting warmth which seeps inside your coat and makes you comfortable inside. There is also a prettiness in the decorations which crowd the store windows and hang from the sides of the buildings and the telephone poles. It is all such a burst of color----like a meadow of bright cardboard and cellophane flowers. Everything seems so bright and lovely; and yet, at the same time, so still. It is as if the town were sleeping.

Bethlehem slept when came the Christ-child....

There is a weird tempo, a modern beat to the Yuletide season here. It is not in the spirit of modern Christmas, for I have already said that it is quiet. Rather, it is in the infant city itself, in its young adult population, in its industry; for this is a different city: it is a government project gouged out of the desert; its people are young and fresh and alive. As you look at them and at the city, you sense the difference two thousand years has made. You know that this is 1954 A.D. You see it and you feel it. And when you stand on a hill outside the city and see the smokestacks of the far away productions plants wherein they are making God-knows-what potential atomic devices of destruction, you have a passionate and sudden desire to be as near to Christmas as you possibly can.