A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Monday, December 28, 2009

Santas at the Wall

A photo for the season from the Gulf Times: Palestinian Santa Clauses demonstrating at the separation barrier near Bethlehem.

Added later: as an aside, the one time I was in Israel/Palestine at Christmastime I saw equally skinny Santas showing up in both Ramallah and Bethlehem. They seem to have adopted the red suit and white beard meme from the West (mostly the US, but then most of Ramallah's Christians have kin in the US), but they didn't adopt the bowl-full-of-jelly plumpness. Or can't afford padding, I'm not sure which.

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