Family gathers in Bethlehem for traditional celebration

The doorbell rang at the stately Sansour home and, amid smiles and hugs, the long-awaited uncle, Dr. Ramzi Sansour, and his family entered to a clamor of cheerful greetings from his brother and sister and their families.

Journeying from Ramallah, West Bank, to spend the holiday with relatives, the family passed smoothly through the Qalandiyah checkpoint, Sansour said: It was the heavy traffic on Christmas Eve that caused their delayed arrival.

This time each year the Sansours — a prominent Catholic family originally from Jerusalem — look forward to gathering with their children for a traditional Christmas celebration.

“We used to be 10 brothers and sisters,” said Marcel Sansour Batarseh, 70, who is married to Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh and whose own three grown children and seven grandchildren live in California. Today family members “are all over the world, but we still gather here like we used to when my late parents were alive.”

“I am not encouraging them to come back because of the situation here,” she added, referring to her children.

Now it is the eldest of the Sansour brothers, Shibly, 74, who hosts the holiday dinner with his sister and brother in the home where their parents settled after fleeing Jerusalem in 1948 during the Arab-Israeli war.

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