People attend Christmas celebrations outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Dec. 24, 2017. Photo: Reuters / Ammar Awad.

i24 News – To mark Christmas 2022, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics released data about the 182,000 Christians who live in the Jewish state.

According to the data, as of Christmas Eve, Christians comprise less than 2 percent of the Israeli population. Of those 182,000 Christians, 75.8 percent were Arab Christians – who constitute 6.9 percent of the total Arab population of Israel.

The vast majority (70.2 percent) of Arab Christians reside in the Northern District or the Haifa District (13.6 percent). Additionally, 39 percent of the non-Arab Christians live in the Tel Aviv and Central Districts, compared to 36.3 percent in the Northern and Haifa Districts.

Nazareth – known as “the Arab capital of Israel” – has the largest Arab Christian population, at 21,100 people. However, only 30.9 percent of its predominantly Arab population is Christian. The other localities with large Arab Christian populations are Haifa (16,700), Jerusalem (12,900), and the northern city of Shefa-Amr (10,500), which has a Sunni Muslim majority.

The data also noted that, in 2020, 582 Christian couples married in Israel. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the average age for Christian grooms (for their first marriage) was 30.6, and for Christian brides, it was 26.8.

In 2021, 2,434 babies were born to Christian women, about 72 percent of whom (1,749 infants) were delivered to Arab Christian women. Interestingly, the average size of a household headed by a Christian was 3.06 people – similar to a Jewish person’s household size. However, this was found to be lower than the size of households headed by a Muslim person (4.46).