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Bethlehem

It's Christmas Eve in the year 1741, and a new society is established in Pennsylvania called Bethlehem. Moravian settlers had come to PA and bought land along the Lehigh River, north of Philadelphia. The Moravian church was established in Europe long ago, considered a Protestant denomination. A Moravian leader, visiting the colony for the first time, sang a hymn for the Christmas holiday and decided to name the settlement Bethlehem after the biblical birthplace of Jesus.

Historians say that town grew quickly. A little more than ten years after that, thousands of Moravians called what's now the Lehigh Valley home, and Bethlehem became the base for Moravian missionary work in North America. All these years later, those who call Bethlehem home continue to celebrate Moravian Christmas traditions.