Dateline: Yonder Star

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Each year on or around Dec. 25, The New York Times has used its reporting to channel the meaning and celebration of the holidays into its pages.

Sometimes that spirit is conveyed by an article’s so-called dateline, the capitalized location that begins certain Times newspaper articles reported from the field. Datelines, particularly before the era of cellphones and social media, were traditionally a gesture of gravitas, meant to signal to a reader that Times journalists were on the ground, physically reporting from a location outside the newsroom. (Recently, The Times introduced more conversational, plain-spoken datelines on online articles.)

Some holiday-season datelines are holy sites of worship. Others are quirky-sounding spots. And some are unabashedly on the nose. Times journalists have reported from Noel, Mo.; Antlers, Okla.; North Pole, Alaska; and Bethlehem (both the Pennsylvania city and the one in the West Bank, recognized by many Christian theologians as the birthplace of Jesus).

Here is a smattering of notable holiday datelines published over the years.

BETHLEHEM, in the West Bank

For decades, the Christmas Day edition of The Times often featured an article from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, with New Testament allusions aplenty. Most detailed the annual pilgrimage of the faithful to the biblical site amid the historical forces of partition and Israeli occupation. Year after year, the dispatches reflect the evolution of the conflict and its reverberations in the city.

An article by Gene Currivan published on Dec. 23, 1945, used these opening lines: “Tonight, like that night almost 2,000 years ago, there still is no room at the inn. From far and near, pilgrims have come again to Bethlehem to be present at the commemoration of the birth of Christ.”