Manipur village celebrates a unique environment-friendly Christmas

Guwahati: Christmas, the global festival, is celebrated with full fun and frolic all over the world. Northeast India too could be seen in the festive spirit with its states participating in the celebrations and spreading love among each other. Manipur too could be seen in the festive spirit but in a different way. Some of the Manipur villages and its people celebrate the festival of lights, colour and happiness in the very unique and commendable way.

At a time when the world environment is at stake and have been arranging seminars and awareness camps for spreading knowledge about the worth of saving the nature, people in the small Manipuri village Vakho are celebrating the festival in the most environment-friendly manner. This village with 300 households is located in Manipur’s Senapati district.

The people in this village too decorated their Christmas tree but unlike anybody else in the world. They crafted beautiful Christmas trees made out of waste plastic bottles rather than buying costly Christmas decorative materials. Such amazingly decorated Christmas trees will certainly attract the passers-by as a view like this is not so common.

For decorating this Christmas tree, the members of the Vakho Youth & Students organisation (VYSO) collected around 700 waste plastic bottles which were being dumped at various places of Senapati which finally took shape of a beautiful Christmas tree. However, the total process of preparation of the Christmas tree took four days.

This drive by the members of the youth organization is an effort towards encouraging the recycling habits in the village. VYSO president Thailu LP intimidated the media about the same. Thailu, who is a graphic designer and a photographer by profession, feels that plastic bottles could be used as decorative items. Moreover, there are seven active members of VYSO who played a key role in making this possible.

Other than the decoration of an environment-friendly Christmas tree, the volunteers of VYSO makes sure that they regularly take up cleaning activities in and around the village.

Not only this, some churches in Ukhrul town too uses waste plastic bottles, compact discs, and all other used materials to prepare Christmas trees to make sure that no trees are cut down.

Also read: Christmas celebrated across Northeast