Thane family ushers in more than a merry Christmas, goes green & secular

It is a green Christmas this year for the Fernandes family residing in Thane's Vartaknagar area. They have built a crib for Jesus with recycled material. The family have also imparted a secular sentiment to the crib, depicting people from across religions and nationalities welcoming a 'global Christ'.

Every year, Dr Veronica Fernandes and her children Melissa, 14, and Manuel, 5, and husband start preparations for Christmas a week ahead of the festival. They build a crib to welcome Jesus by getting easy-to-put-together material from the market, such as thermocol, plastic toys, ornaments, etc.

"Thermocol is messy and after Christmas we do not know what to do with it. So, this year we decided to build an eco-friendly crib and made it using stuff lying in my clinic and house," said Dr Fernandes. Her clinic storeroom is full of cardboard boxes of gloves, cotton, and dental instruments, among other things.

"I had preserved those boxes and used them to make the crib and decorate it," she said. This year they started preparations for the crib from the start of December. "To get the grass greener even on this side of the crib, we soaked mustard seeds 10 days ago," she said.

The mustard seeds have now germinated fully. They also used empty pista shells to make ornaments and used glue from the glue gun to depict a waterfall. Hay from old brooms and coir ropes have been used to build roof of the huts.

To impart a secular character, the family made miniatures of a south Indian woman and a Chinese man among others," she added.

Though their Christmas tree is made of plastic, it has been in use for the past 15 years. "We did not buy a new one. We use the same one every Christmas and pack it and keep it aside after the festival is over," the doctor said.