Lakhs of devotees attend service to celebrate birth of Christ

TURA: Special midnight services across churches in Garo Hills ushered in the joyous celebration of Christmas, to mark the birth of Lord Jesus Christ, as lakhs of Christians offered prayers of thanksgiving and wished one another.
The message of hope, love and peace were given during church service and devotees were urged to do their bid for the less fortunate.
Highlights of the Christmas service were at the Sacred Heart Shrine and the Tura Baptist Church where record number of devotees attended night service braving the winter chill. The celebrations reached it’s zenith as the clock struck midnight with fireworks lighting up the night sky to announce the beginning of Christmas as thousands of people came out on to the streets to participate in the traditional community dancing that went on through the night at different localities.
However, compared to previous years, the crowds out on the streets at night were far less given the winter chill.
There was also a drastic drop in rash and drunk driving by young revellers primarily due to two factors, namely mobile patrolling and containment of bootleggers. To check rising cases of underage driving as well as drunk drivers, police patrol parties were out at select points of Tura town with breath analyser equipment.
Also, liquor no longer flowed like the previous years as a massive clampdown was put in place targetting the top bootleggers who normally made a killing selling hundreds of crates of liquor in the black market during Christmas celebrations. Besides s night of dancing, community feasts were organised at various localities on Christmas day.
Families, neighbours and friends alike met up to share a lighter moment as they joined in the community lunch savoring the rich delicacies of traditional Garo food that included the famous “Wak Gominda” (pork with pumpkin), “Wak Pura” (pork with rice powder), “Do’o and Wak Brenga” (chicken and pork cooked inside a bamboo on an open flame) and “Geda Purse Wak” (pork made with the interns of a banana plant) among others.
Though Western taste had long back turned to be the flavour of the season with cookies and cakes, yet, traditional cakes made from rice did not lose their space either with people specially ordering or making themselves the time tasted delicacies like “Menil Pita” “Menil Jakkep” and “Sakkin gata” rice cakes made with black sesame seeds.