People across India gear up for Christmas revelry

Kochi: People across India decorated their houses and work places with stars, lights, stuffed Santa Claus and bells as they prepared to celebrate Christmas.

A private resort group decorated their entire premises with beautifully crafted decor made of used and recycled items in Kochi, Kerala.

The resort has turned newspapers, magazines and old bottles into appealing decor items.

The lobby of the hotel looked magical with Christmas trees of different sizes crafted from old magazines, stars from old cartons, baubles made of old newspapers and coloured curls form old plastic bottles.

Snowman, reindeer, Santa Claus and table decor made of bottles took centre stage.George Joseph, general manager of Casino Hotel, said they have come up with an innovative approach for decorations with used and recycled materials.

“We have come up with a very innovative way of making our decorations especially with the products which has been used and recycled to make it an up-cycled product and this challenge was given to all the housekeepers of the CGH earth properties. So we found this a huge challenge for the staff, the big challenge for the staff was to come up with a very innovative product,” said General Manager of Casino Hotel, George Joseph.

Along with rest of the country, Manipur also geared up for Christmas.

Churches in the city were all set for the festival .They set up displays commemorating the birth of Jesus.

“We had already started nine days of special preparation in way of Christmas, so that is one important thing, many people come, we call it ‘novena’, novena means nine days, so we had started that one earlier. Then before that the whole month of December we have been preparing, what do you call, we are in the season of ‘advent’, advent means coming, coming of Jesus,” said Father Sabastine.

Christians form less than three percent of India’s more than one billion population but Christmas is now widely celebrated in metros and other big cities with much pomp, gaiety and devotion and also by preparing special dishes for the day.

ANI