On recent evenings, Nazareth’s center has, once again, been crowded. A towering Christmas tree stands beside the church, with a Nativity scene at its base, while stalls selling food, toys, and wooden handicrafts line the surrounding streets. Strings of lights stretch above the alleys, cafés spill out onto painted stairways, and families stop to photograph their children under the decorations before moving on to buy candy or hot beverages.  

Nazareth’s residents are predominantly Arab, with a Christian minority living alongside a Muslim majority. In ordinary years, the city is one of Israel’s leading destinations for Christmas-related tourism. Pilgrim groups come to visit the churches and holy sites during the day, while Israeli families—Jews, Muslims, and Christians—often drive up in the afternoon to walk through the markets, see the decorations, and eat in local restaurants. That mix all but disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic and then again for the first two years of the Gaza war, when travel and public gatherings were heavily restricted.  

“This year feels completely different,” said Tareq Shihada, head of public relations and programs at the Golden Crown hotel chain, speaking with The Media Line. “For a long time, there was almost no activity. Tourists stopped coming, people stayed home, and the streets were empty.”  

Shihada said the shift began when churches and local associations decided to plan Christmas events again once the ceasefire came into effect and restrictions were eased. The municipality and tourism ministry followed by hanging light installations and banners at key junctions and entrances to the old city. By early December, he noted, residents understood that Nazareth was preparing for a very different Christmas from the previous two years.  

Rather than a single central fair, Christmas markets and performances are now spread across several locations in the city. At one of them, pupils from local schools play Christmas music, Arabic songs, and international melodies. Nearby, rows of stalls offer traditional food, hot drinks, handmade jewelry, and Christmas ornaments. Most of the vendors are from Nazareth or nearby towns and say they had almost no income from tourism during the past two Decembers.  

Away from the old city, the Golden Crown hotel, where Shihada works, has turned its courtyard into one of Nazareth’s busiest Christmas markets. He said that on peak days, as many as 3,000 people pass through the hotel grounds, with families from across Israel lining up to enter the decorated terrace, buy food and small gifts, and look out over the lights of the valley below. For some visitors, it has become an alternative to the packed streets around the main tree in the center of town.   

“The last two years were very hard,” said Nally Safuri, a civil engineer from Nazareth who helped organize one of the markets through the Al Mawkeb association. “There was no tourism, businesses suffered, and people were really down,” he told The Media Line. “We wanted to bring people back to the streets and give shop owners and families a little push.”  

Safuri said the organizers tried to make the market feel like a community initiative rather than just a commercial fair. One full day was set aside for children with disabilities and special needs, with games and performances adapted so they could move easily through the area and take part in the activities. “For us, it was important that everyone could be part of this,” he said. “It’s not only about selling more. It’s about feeling that the city is alive again.”  

During the first year of the war, Nazareth lay within the range of Hezbollah rocket fire from southern Lebanon, adding another layer of anxiety for residents in northern Israel. Combined with general limits on public gatherings, that reality left little space for open-air concerts, parades, or large tree-lighting ceremonies. Even switching on a public Christmas tree became a sensitive decision.  

With active fighting over and restrictions eased, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism has used this season to showcase Nazareth as a place worth visiting again. As part of that effort, it invited foreign journalists on a tour that combined Christian holy sites, city sights, and local food, aiming to present both the religious and the everyday sides of the city.  

The tour began at Mount Precipice, a lookout on a rocky edge just south of Nazareth. On clear days, visitors can see the entire urban area spread out below, the Jezreel Valley stretching east and west, and several mountain ranges that frame the Galilee. The site serves as a visual introduction to the city’s location and its connections to the wider region, before driving into the narrow streets and markets.  

From there, the group continued to Tishrin, a well-known restaurant in the city center that serves classic Arab dishes with a refined presentation. Plates of grilled meat, salads, stews, and pastries were brought to the table one by one, while staff explained the ingredients and cooking methods. The stop highlighted a message that tourism officials and hotel managers have been repeating for years: Nazareth should be seen as a destination with delicious food and plenty of places to explore before spending the night, not simply as a religious stop on a pilgrimage route.    

“Food is part of the experience,” Shihada said. “People don’t come just to visit one church and leave. They want to sit in a restaurant, sleep in a hotel, explore the streets. Culture, architecture, archaeology, and cuisine all meet here.”  

At the heart of Nazareth’s religious identity is still the Basilica of the Annunciation. The modern Catholic church, completed in the 1960s, was built over earlier structures and incorporates layers of stonework that Christian tradition links to the home of Mary and to the moment when the angel Gabriel announced the birth of Jesus. During December, lines of visitors form at the entrance, and small groups move between chapels, mosaics donated by different countries, and the lower level of the basilica, where older remains are visible.  

For Shihada and others in the tourism sector, the return of such scenes is encouraging, but they are careful not to speak of a full recovery. International pilgrim groups have started to appear again, especially from Europe and Asia, yet their numbers are still far from those seen before the pandemic and the Gaza war. Many of the crowds this season are domestic visitors, Israelis who drive up for a few hours in the afternoon or evening rather than staying overnight in local hotels.  

“Christmas is very visible, but it is not necessarily the high season for incoming pilgrims,” Shihada noted. “Those usually come later in the year. What we see now is mostly local tourism, which is still very important for the city.”  

Safuri also warned against expecting a quick return to business as usual. Some stores on Nazareth’s main streets remain closed or open only part-time. Others have reopened mainly for the holiday period, hoping that December sales will help cover debts from the last two years. He observed that the difference compared with last Christmas is obvious.  

“You can feel it in small things,” he said. “Families walking in the evening, cafés full again, children asking their parents to take them to see the lights. People missed that.”  

For many residents, those simple scenes matter at least as much as any official tourism statistic. In a city whose name is tied worldwide to the opening chapter of the Christian story, the steady return of public life at Christmas does not yet amount to a dramatic transformation. But it suggests that, after a long pause, Nazareth is now learning to welcome visitors back.