India celebrates Christmas with full zeal: Watch PICS

Meghalaya's 100-year-old towering coniferous pine tree that withstood the 1897 Assam earthquake,is all lit up to usher in the Yuletide spirit.The 80-feet-tall pine tree in the fore lawn of the All Saints Cathedral, the tallest and oldest tree in the Northeast, could possibly lay claim to such fame in the country too as record of such a tree is not heard elsewhere,Rev P B Lyngdoh, who heads the church, told .The tree has remained lit every single Christmas since it was planted in the 1880s, he said. It had withstood the test of time and the devastating 1897 Assam earthquake which destroyed parts of the old church."Every time the tree is lit, it tells the world that Christmas is around and every evening hundreds of visitors come to look at this giant coniferous pine tree," Lyngdoh said.