In a depressing departure from the seasonal spirit, the town of Bethlehem is this week the centre of a new Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.
Both sides are describing four hours of fighting on the northern edge of the town, late on Sunday night and into Monday, as among the heaviest since the conflict erupted more than nine weeks ago.
The violence continued in the same area last night, with long bursts of gunfire from the Palestinian town of Beit Jallah, adjoining Bethlehem, met by Israeli army fire from Giloh, the Jewish neighbourhood on the southern edge of Jerusalem, which is built on territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war.
The Bethlehem fighting was focused on Rachel's Tomb, a site revered as the burial place of the biblical matriarch.
A popular if nondescript shrine until a decade ago, it now resembles a military bunker after a series of clashes in recent years.
Like Joseph's Tomb on the outskirts of another West Bank town, Nablus, it constitutes an Israeli-held enclave on the edge of a Palestinian-controlled area.
Unlike Joseph's Tomb, however, from which Israeli troops withdrew under fire in the early days of this conflict, both military and government officials are adamant that there can be no withdrawal from Rachel's Tomb.
The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, yesterday said he was "shocked" at the upsurge in violence in and around Bethlehem.
Israeli military officials retorted that the attacks had been initiated by the Palestinians, with Tanzim militia fighters and other gunmen leading an assault on the shrine from three directions.
Responding to some media reports that the Palestinians had come close to loosening Israel's hold on the area, soldiers at the site last night derided the notion, and said they had not sustained any casualties in the fighting.
Israeli helicopters fired at least two missiles into a building adjoining the Aida refugee camp nearby, in response to Palestinian gunfire, officials said. Palestinian officials said five people were injured.
Mr Arafat, who returned yesterday from a trip to the United Arab Emirates, was seen publicly carrying a gun, for the first time since he came to Gaza from Tunis six years ago. He was holding the weapon, he said, because settlers had blocked a road on his route from Gaza's airport into Gaza City. Israeli officials confirmed that settlers had been protesting in the area, but said Mr Arafat's motorcade was not delayed.
Elsewhere in Gaza, the body of a Hamas militant, Awad Silmi, was found on a road near the settlement of Netzarim. He had apparently been preparing to plant a roadside bomb when it exploded. Mr Silmi, alleged by Israel to have killed a soldier in the early 1990s, was freed by the Palestinian Authority from jail in October.