[9] Prior to European settlements, the areas around present-day Bethlehem and its surrounding locales along the Delaware River and its tributaries in eastern Pennsylvania were inhabited by various indigenous peoples, including the Algonquian-speaking Lenape, which had three main divisions, known by the dialects, the Unami, Unalachtigo, and Munsee.

On April 2, 1741, William Allen, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant and political figure, who later founded the city of Allentown, deeded 500 acres (200 ha) along the banks of the Monocacy Creek and Lehigh River to the Moravian Church.

[10] On Christmas Eve of that year, David Nitschmann and Nicolaus Zinzendorf, leading a small group of Moravians, founded the mission community of Bethlehem at the confluence of the Monocacy and Lehigh rivers.

They established missionary communities among the Native Americans and unchurched German-speaking Christians and named the settlement after the Biblical town Bethlehem of Judea, said to be the birthplace of Jesus.

In the autumn of 1777, during the American Revolutionary War, many patriots fled from Philadelphia to Bethlehem and the surrounding area as the British Army advanced from the east.

On September 22, 1777, fourteen members of the Second Continental Congress signed the Moravian Sun Inn register in Bethlehem and stayed there overnight.

[13][14] George Washington stored his personal effects at the James Burnside farm at 1461 Schoenersville Road in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem was one of the four leading Moravian communities in the Northeastern United States; Emmaus, Lititz, and Nazareth, each in Pennsylvania, were the three others.

Precipitation is distributed fairly uniformly throughout the year, with thunderstorms in the summer, showers in spring and fall, and snow in winter.

Bethlehem Steel began producing the first wide-flange structural shapes made in the United States and they pioneered the production of the now-ubiquitous "I-beam" used in construction of steel-framed buildings, including skyscrapers.

In December 2006, Las Vegas Sands Corp was awarded a Category 2 Slot Machine License by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

At a projected cost of $743 million, the historic Bethlehem Steel plant is being redeveloped as a fully integrated resort, to include 3,000 slot machines, over 300 hotel rooms, 9 restaurants, 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of retail outlet shopping, and 46,000 square feet (4,300 m2) of flexible multi-purpose space.

Other major employers include B. Braun, Lehigh University, and the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.

Since then, the block has been reopened to traffic, and the mall has been converted into offices for PowerSchool, a software company based in Folsom, California, and the Internal Revenue Service.

[34][35] On the city's South Side, new stores and restaurants opened on 3rd and 4th streets in the early 21st century, due partly to the presence of Lehigh University and the 2009 openings of Wind Creek Bethlehem casino and SteelStacks, a 10-acre campus dedicated to music and the arts, on property that was previously part of Bethlehem Steel's global manufacturing headquarters prior to the company's 2001 liquidation.

[7] On December 7, 1937, at a grand ceremony during the Great Depression, the city adopted the nickname 'Christmas City USA in a large ceremony that included Marion Brown Grace, the daughter of former South Bethlehem burgess Charles F. Brown and wife of Bethlehem Steel president Eugene Grace.

Hundreds of citizens attended the ceremony and thousands more listened to the speeches and musical performances on the radio, which was held at Hotel Bethlehem, then a two-room log house, where the original settlers conducted their evening worship on Christmas Eve in 1741.

The people gathered at the 1937 ceremony heard the same words when the Bach Choir sang the old German hymn, "Jesu, Rufe Mich (Jesus, Call Thou Me)", by Adam Drese.

The Bethlehem Globe-Times, which later merged into The Express-Times, paid for the large wooden star erected on the top of South Mountain, at a cost of $460.

The festival spans 10 days, attracts roughly a million attendees from all over the world, and features hundreds of musical acts from all genres.

[45] Lehigh Valley RFC, a rugby union team founded in 1998, play their home matches at Monocacy Park.

[46] The Lehigh Valley Steelhawks, a former Professional Indoor Football League, played home games at Stabler Arena in Bethlehem until they moved to Allentown in 2014.

[47] In the early part of the 20th century, Bethlehem had a corporate soccer team, the Bethlehem Steel F.C., which won the 1918–19 championship in the National Association Football League (NAFL), and then won what amounted to national championships three more times during the next decade (1920–21 in the NAFL; 1926–27 in the American Soccer League I; and in 1928–29 winning the EPSL II).

The Bethlehem Steel sides consisted largely of British imported players and also had the distinction of being the first American professional soccer team to play in Europe, which it did during its tour of Sweden in 1919.

Federally, Bethlehem is part of Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district, represented by Democrat Susan Wild until January 2025, when Republican Ryan Mackenzie will be sworn in.

[54] Besides undergraduate programs, the college also includes the Moravian Theological Seminary, a graduate school with approximately 100 students from more than a dozen religious denominations.

Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts is also operated by the district, though it accepts students in grades 9–12 from throughout Northampton and surrounding counties.

Religious broadcaster WBPH is the only television station licensed in Bethlehem, though WLVT Channel 39, a PBS affiliate, has its operations in the city.

Bethlehem is part of the Philadelphia media market, the nation's fourth-largest, and its cable systems also receive select radio and television broadcasts from New York City.

Finally, Pennsylvania Route 412 heads northwest from its interchange with I-78, following Hellertown Road into downtown, then a variety of city streets before coming to its northern terminus at PA 378.