Keeping Christmas Alive on a Baghdad Street Corner

Shortly after that speech, armed men in the northern city of Mosul opened fire on the Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit. A priest from the Syriac Orthodox Church was kidnapped, then decapitated.

The violence has led many Christians to flee the country. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 44 percent of Iraqis seeking asylum in Syria are Christians. In the first four months of this year, Iraqi Christians were also the largest group seeking asylum in Jordan, the agency said.

Christians are moving out of Mosul, Baghdad and the southern city of Basra to the generally peaceful northern Kurdistan region, while others are migrating to Turkey, Sweden and Australia, the agency reported.

Carlo Aziz, a monk at the Church of the Roman Catholic in Karrada, estimates that about 400,000 Christians remain.

His church once had 300 families. In October 2004, a car bomb exploded at the church, destroying the building and everything in it except for a wooden cross that is now prominently displayed on the altar of the newly rebuilt edifice. It has freshly painted white walls, new stained-glass windows and paintings around the altar. But more than half of its families have fled, Aziz said.

At no time is the exodus more evident than Christmas. Churches, now hidden behind barbed-wire fences and blast walls, do not advertise their Christmas services.

Aziz stood at the altar of his church Tuesday afternoon. There were no decorations. No Christmas tree. No nativity scene.

"Celebration doesn't always mean making a show," he said, placing a hand on his chest. "The celebration is inside the heart. Jesus is here inside the heart of the human being."

Yusef Zawet and his brother Assem used to sell natural trees on the sidewalk of their flower shop in Karrada. They imported them from Turkey, Iran and Syria. But the lack of security on the roads has made shipping trees, or anything else, too expensive. Last year, their driver was attacked on a road in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. The Lebanese-born Zawets, who fled Lebanon during its civil war for what was then the safety of Baghdad, lost $35,000 worth of plants.

"It's a good thing they only took the truck and didn't behead him," Assem said. Now they keep artificial Christmas trees inside their shop.

Dawoud won't settle for that. He has been planting the real thing at his farm north of Baghdad for 35 years. He's got the weathered face to prove it, leathery skin under a patch of gray stubble.

On Monday, Dawoud sold three trees. On Tuesday, he sold 10. In years past, he said, he would sell 20 or 30 in one day.

He said he was starting to feel lonely at his corner, which faces a telecommunications center and is near restaurants that no one goes to anymore. For company, he had only two young brothers who sell cigarettes and orange soda from a kiosk. Kadhum Sayat, 15, tried to act as brave as Dawoud. The boy said he wanted to be buried in Najaf, a city sacred to Shiites, if anything happened to him at the corner. "We leave it up to God," he said.

Dawoud was less worried about death. "No one is coming to ask about trees," he said.

Then a man walked up. He picked out a tree, paid for it and left in a matter of minutes. He acted just like a thief, Dawoud said when he was gone. "When they steal, they look over their shoulders and hide," he said. "That's what they're doing now when they buy trees."

Special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.