Bhubaneswar, Dec. 25: Christmas is usually associated with red but this year, a group of youngsters from the city came together to celebrate a "green" Christmas.
Bakul Foundation came up with the innovative celebration. Youngsters distributed saplings among people, while men dressed as Santa Claus gave them away the people along Janpath and urged onlookers to plant trees for a cleaner environment.
Churches in the city had already set the tune for Christmas over the past few days with fairy light decorations, Christmas tress and models of Santa Claus was a huge hit with. Revellers braved the winter chill and thronged churches in the twin cities - Bhubaneswar and Cuttack - from last night.
Two popular churches in Bhubaneswar - St Vincent's Catholic Church at Janpath and Church of Christ (Union Church) at Satya Nagar - had arranged midnight masses on the eve of Christmas.
The St Vincent's Catholic Church had also made arrangements to live stream the festivities via its social media pages, including Facebook and YouTube.
"There will be a candlelight vigil demonstrating the historical events related to the birth of Jesus from 11pm till 2am. A number of similar events took place during the night. We wanted to ensure that more people got to see those," said Father Prasanna Kumar Pradhan.
All 14 churches in Cuttack, including 11 Baptist and two Catholic, were decked up to celebrate Jesus's birth. Prayers were sung in English, Odia, Hindi and Malayali, while other celebrations included singing of the carol, reading of the Bible and exposition of its content.
Few youngsters came up with other innovative ideas to celebrate Christmas. While members of youth group Prayaash took underprivileged kids to watch Dangal, Amir Khan's new release, a group of Utkal University students dressed up as Santa Claus and visited special schools here.
"We collected gifts and money from our friends and families and bought chocolates. We visited schools for the differently-abled and distributed these among the children. We also played interactive games," said varsity student Subrat Behera.
Christmas is synonymous with cakes and bakeries across the twin cities had on offer sumptuous cakes and pastries for the gastronomes to indulge.
