Chapter 2

December 24, 1741

A small group of Moravians settled on the banks of the Lehigh River, in Pennsylvania, near the Monocacy Creek. They represented the oldest organized Protestant denomination in the world, the Unitas Fratrum, or Unity of the Brethren, founded in 1457 by followers of John Hus, a Roman Catholic priest who had tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church.

Hus was burned at the stake for his beliefs. His followers called themselves Moravians because many of the original founders came from the provinces of Moravia and Bohemia in central Europe, in what is now the Czech Republic.

On Christmas Eve 1741, the Moravians’ patron, Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf of Saxony, Germany, visited the new settlement. In a two-room log home that housed both man and beast, the Count christened the community “Bethlehem.”

By 1747, thirty-six different trades and industries exported their wares from Bethlehem throughout the colonies. By 1845, the more than 1,000 inhabitants voted to incorporate the village into a free borough in the County of Northampton. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Bethlehem became a center of heavy industry and trade.

In 1937, the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce, mindful of Bethlehem’s first Christmas in 1741, declared– Bethlehem, “named at Christmas, the Christmas City for the entire country.” Thus, since 1937, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has been known throughout the world as Christmas City USA.