PSE Advent Calendar 2022 (Day 16): A Christmas Card from my Travel Agent

Question

<sub>This puzzle is part of the Puzzling Stack Exchange Advent Calendar 2022. The accepted answer to this question will be awarded a bounty worth 50 reputation.

< Previous Door Next Door ></sub>

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"Hi Pat! I just got your Christmas card."

"Oh, do you like the picture? That is our living room, all decorated for Christmas."

"Very nice! You know, I'm thinking of taking a trip early next year. Any ideas?"

"I've got the perfect destination for you...in fact, my boys are on their way there right now!"

"Great...where are you thinking?"

"Oh, my boys' names tell you exactly where they're headed."

"OK, Pat, I'll play along. What are their names?"

"It's in the card! Uh-oh, gotta run..."

So I looked in the card, and there aren't any, you know...words. Just the picture on the front, as shown below. Can you help me figure out the names of Pat's boys, and then tell me where Pat wants to send me?

Answer 1

I believe the perfect place for you to travel to is probably:

Bethlehem in Palestine (or possibly Nazareth in Israel, depending on your reading of the New Testament...).

Why? Because you can find the names of "the boys" concealed among...

...the country flags and maritime alphabet flags depicted on the wrappings of the three piles of Christmas presents.

Pile 1:
- The flags of Gabon (GA, in 2-letter country codes) and Panama (PA).
- The maritime flag codes for the letters S (blue square in white background), R (yellow cross on red background), and D (blue horizontal stripe between thinner yellow stripes).

These letters anagram to GASPARD.

Pile 2:
- The flags of Montenegro (ME), Saint Lucia (LC), and the British Indian Ocean territory (IO).
- The maritime flag codes for H (white and red vertical halves) and R (yellow cross on red background).

These letters anagram to MELCHIOR.

Pile 3:
- The flags of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BA), Lithuania (LT), Azerbaijan (AZ) and Argentina (AR).
- The maritime flag code for H (white and red vertical halves).

These letters anagram to BALTHAZAR.

And of course these three names are those of...

...the Magi, or 'Three Wise Men', who visited Mary, Joseph and Jesus after his birth.

The question is where exactly did they visit Jesus, though? Without going too deep into Biblical text interpretations, the candidates are really Bethlehem (the place of Jesus' birth) and Nazareth (his hometown), so it really depends on how long after the birth the Magi paid their visit. Regardless, it seems Pat is sending you to the region of modern-day Israel and Palestine either way!

Note: The OP hid a cavalcade of red herrings along the way (sneaky!):

The tree decorations spell out DISTRACTOR in semaphore flag code.

The pictures on the wall represent the NATO phonetic alphabet letters BRAVO (Johnny Bravo), OSCAR (Oscar Mayer), GOLF, UNIFORM, and SIERRA (the model of car), which together spell BOGUS.

The stockings can be read as Morse code (hanging left as a dash, right as a dot), giving:
-. --- .--. .
or NOPE!