Read Bill Newcott’s story on Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Kelly Ferguson, a soft-spoken fellow with long hair and a ZZ Top beard, is leading me toward a municipal light pole that stands at a street corner along Bethlehem Road. It’s mid-November and getting dark. An irregular stream of cars and trucks provides what counts as rush hour in this part of Maryland’s rural Delmarva Peninsula.
Ferguson stretches to reach a light switch about 7 feet up the pole.
“Let’s see if the bulbs are all working,” he says, flicking it.
Above the traffic, hanging from a wire that stretches across the street, a 10-bulb Star of Bethlehem flickers to life. Well, at least nine bulbs. One light, at the star’s apex, fails to illuminate.
Ferguson frowns. This will not do for the 25 or so people who live in Bethlehem, Maryland.
“We’ll get ahold of a cherry picker and try to replace that one on Thanksgiving morning,” he says.
For most of us, Christmas comes but once a year. But for the good people of Bethlehem, Maryland, along with some 30 other identically named communities around the U.S., it’s a low-burning holiday season every time they drive past their town’s “Welcome to Bethlehem” sign.
From the nation’s westernmost Bethlehem, in South Dakota, to Lower Bethlehem on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix (probably so-named by Moravian missionaries from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), it appears the locals inevitably draw much of their year-round identity from their namesake town an ocean and an inland sea away.
That’s certainly true of Bethlehem, Maryland, where the Star of Bethlehem hangs unlit all year, an almost subliminal reminder of this place name’s significance.
Besides being Keeper of the Star – lit all December – Ferguson is owner of Bethlehem Consignments & More, a shambling collection of clothes, knick-knacks, toys, and what-nots, some of which literally spill out the front door at Bethlehem’s main — and, truth be told, only – intersection.
The store is worth a half-day’s perusal at any time of year, but around Christmas, Ferguson and his wife, Ruth, pull out all the holiday consignment stuff, creating a realm of colorful, if sometimes slightly droopy, Yuletide cheer. They also sell exclusive “Bethlehem, Maryland” tree ornaments, and attached to the store is a U.S. Post Office that draws people from more than 50 miles away to have their Christmas cards postmarked “Bethlehem.” What’s more, since 1939 the Bethlehem postmaster has been stamping each card with a large image of the Three Kings following the Christmas Star.
“It’s funny,” says Ferguson. “I grew up near Bethlehem, Kentucky, and here I am living in Bethlehem, Maryland. Not on purpose. Bethlehem just seems to happen to me.”
Bethlehem, Texas
On a lonely stretch of Farm Road 1650, about 13 miles north of Longview, you’ll roll through one of America’s littlest towns of Bethlehem: There’s a three-way intersection, a cemetery, a couple of houses, and the Open Range Cowboy Church, housed in a low-slung, windowless steel building. Each Sunday, men and women representing Texas’s centuries-old cowboy culture gather to pray, sing, and listen to messages. Before each service, the men gather in one prayer circle and the women in another.
Most years, the Cowboy Church stages a Christmas play. It’s a modest affair – a far cry from the over-the-top holiday light shows that draw tourists by the thousands to Texas’s big cities.
Still, the quiet streets of Bethlehem, Texas are for sure a lot more like the ones a certain expectant couple trod, looking for a place to spend the night, more than 2,000 years ago. It’s hard to imagine a more authentically American way to spend the holidays than here, where Bethlehem is home on the range.
Bethlehem, Iowa
As you might expect, from the time Bethlehem, Iowa was founded in 1852, they’ve had churches. By the late 1800s, when some 300 people lived in the village, there seem to have been at least three. But today, in a community of less than 25, only one remains: an almost impossibly small nondenominational wayside church known to locals as The Bethlehem Chapel.
The pint-sized house of worship was built in 1973, after the local Methodists disbanded their local church.
“People still wanted a place to come and meditate and maybe have small weddings,” says Dave Baker, an Iowa historian who hosts the Facebook page The 29th State.
The private foundation that once ran the chapel has long since disbanded. These days, Baker says, a local volunteer group provides upkeep and makes the place available for couples planning very, very small weddings.
“Basically,” says Baker, “there’s room for you and me and a couple of friends.”
Bethlehem, Georgia
Every Christmas week for 62 years, bracing themselves against chilly North Georgia winter nights, the folks in Bethlehem, Georgia – a short drive from Atlanta – have gathered in the town square, under an electric star in a makeshift stable to reenact the first Christmas as it happened in the original Bethlehem. Which is to say there are today bearded wise men in the tableau who started out as Bethlehem’s littlest shepherd boys during the first Johnson administration.
The Bethlehem Live Nativity is sponsored by Bethlehem First United Methodist Church, but it’s the pride of the community (the Town of Bethlehem website features an image of the pageant alongside pictures of the town hall and local fish hatchery). There are cookies to munch, farm animals to pet, and hot chocolate to cradle in cold hands.
“It’s become a generational thing here,” says Rev. Frank Bernat, pastor of the church. “We have grandparents, their children, and their grandchildren each year.”
It’s not unusual for a last-minute call to go out for fill-in shepherds, angels, and wise men and women. But the waiting list for major parts is a long one.
“A lot of girls aspire to be Mary,” says Bernat, “but really, everyone wants to be the angel who gets to stand on top, right underneath the star. That’s kind of the coveted role.”
Thousands of live Nativity scenes pop up nationwide every year, but there’s something uniquely poignant about traveling to an actual Bethlehem to find an actual young couple and their baby huddling in the dark of night.
“Sometimes,” says Bernat, “it’s easy to lose sight of Christ in the middle of all that’s going on around Christmas.
“We like the idea of reminding everyone. And what better place to do that than in Bethlehem?”
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