Christmas joy is as scarce in Bethlehem as the few tourists intrepid enough to visit the war-torn West Bank town revered as the birthplace as Jesus.
Owners of stores selling carved nativity sets and other Christian souvenirs sat glumly in shops around Manger Square two days before Christmas, with little hope of an upturn in trade.
"So far today there have been no tourists," said Joseph Giacaman as he sorted yellowing postcards that have sat on his shelves since before the Palestinian uprising erupted more than three years ago.
"When there are a few tourists they don't come here. They go to the church and then they leave," he said despondently.
Giacaman's family began making and selling olive wood souvenirs about 150 years ago.
"Many times in the past there used to be trouble but still tourists would come," he said. "But now..." he gestured at the near-empty square in front of the Church of the Nativity, in better days the centre of Christmas festivities.
An officer for the Palestinian Tourist Police counts the handful of tourists each day, entering the statistics on his clipboard.
"So far we've had around 20 today," said Rami the policeman. During the heyday of Middle East peacemaking in the 1990s, Bethlehem was visited by as many as 6,000 tourists a day, he said. A modern bus station built then now stands empty.