Every Christmas, Charlie Harb brings a little bit of Bethlehem (home to the Harbs for more than 700 years) to San Francisco for his wife and two children, 13-year-old Jiries and 10-year-old Dalia-Nova. Charlie, who owns San Francisco’s popular Charlie’s Deli Cafe, moved to the Bay Area 23 years ago, in the midst of the first Intifada (Palestinian uprising), to pursue an education, and freedom, in the U.S.
Despite painful memories of life under occupation - including all-day curfews and even an Israeli military checkpoint that blocked his parent’s driveway at Christmas-time - Charlie has fond memories of Christmas in his home town. “Bethlehem is amazing,” he says. “There would be marching bands in the street and tourists from around the world during Christmas.” Family members would all gather on Christmas Eve at Teta’s (Grandma in Arabic) to exchange gifts and to share a traditional Palestinian Christmas menu featuring stuffed leg of lamb, grape leaves and stuffed chicken.
Today, Harb’s parents still live in Bethlehem, where they own a gift shop. Like others there, they face an economy devastated by Israeli-imposed movement restrictions and the wall that surrounds the ancient city. Every year they display a Nativity scene handcrafted from olive wood, a tradition they kept alive this year even though Charlie and his siblings Ramzi and Nadim won’t be able to join them for Christmas.
Charlie’s mother tried for years to downplay the dangers of the Israeli occupation, hoping Charlie would bring his wife Kris, and the kids; but today she’s given up. Instead, the Harb family recreates Charlie’s Christmas experience from back home in their new home, San Francisco, with hand-made olive wood ornaments from Bethlehem and others that his daughter crafted in school.
Christmas traditions mix, as Charlie always opened his gifts on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, but today he makes sure the kids have gifts to open on Christmas Day. They wake up around 7 or 8 am to presents stacked under the tree, often with the company (and gifts) of Charlie’s brothers; “but not before checking if Santa ate the cookies and soy milk (he’s lactose intolerant!) that they left out for him,” Harb reminds us.
It’s a scene Charlie hopes to one day recreate for his children in the city of his birth.