The city is gearing up to celebrate Christmas. The gift shops and bakeries are flooded with innovative items to attract citizens towards the festival.
Christians follow their traditions with religious beliefs for the festival and getting themselves prepared for past one month. They visit churches for prayers; attending carols, distribute gifts among their relatives and colleagues. Youth celebrate Christmas Eve by organising get-together parties with their families and friends by exchanging gifts and sweets. According to Jatin Asnani (Café Alabina), his team is going to decorate their café on red theme with the use of frills, balloons and other decorative items.
The shops are getting themselves prepared by erecting stalls in front of their shops. This Christmas some new accessories with latest trends are available in the markets for decoration like statues of Jesus, Mother Mary and Santa which are followed by other decorative items like Christmas trees, frills, stars, bells and special cards which are available in the market at different costs. ‘Archies Gallery’ is offering all the latest trends of decorative items under one roof’ as said by Ravi Khatwani, Abhinandan Archies Gallery, 10 no; bus stop.
Special attraction on the festival of Christmas is dry cake. Varieties of cakes are available in the markets which include rum cake, plum cake, dundi cake and others. Some special varieties of dry cakes are also being prepared by the bakeries. According to Sanjay Wadhwani (Manager, Bake N Shake), ‘their entity is going to provide different categories of dry cakes and about varieties of cookies.”
Christmas is the festival of peace and many social groups are trying to do something new for the society, they celebrate festival by making crowd aware of social causes, which is recently noticed in Spain where a group of community organized a rally in the costume of Santa to make every individual aware of traffic rules. However, another incident was noticed in lahore (Pakistan) where Pastor of a church came forward in the rally and requested people to live life in a peaceful manner.
Teacher at St Joseph’s co-ed Harsha Fernandis informed that besides sacrifices and teaching of Jesus Christ, Christmas is also about Santa Claus, lights, decorations. The beauty of the church and the general excitement for Christmas makes a memorable experience for being in church premises. On the next day all family members, relatives and friends visit to each other place and share gifts and cakes.
A student Shirleen Austin said that the festivity that starts from December 24 continues for a week, till New Year. From December 21, carol singing members along with Santa Claus and Pastor of a church visit to houses and share cheerful songs and give blessings to all family members. I am enjoying this festival with lots of joy as this marks the symbol of peace.