Pope Francis on Sunday kicked off global Christmas celebrations with a call for peace, as Israel's war on Hamas and Russia's invasion of Ukraine cast a shadow over one of the world's favourite holidays, reports BSS.
Revellers the world over, meanwhile, donned Santa's red caps for a shot of holiday cheer -- running a city race in Skopje, North Macedonia, surfing the waves in Florida, jogging along muddy wooded paths on the outskirts of Paris, dipping in the sea near the port of Dover, and soaking with a drink in hand in Lake Geneva.
And children around the globe tracked Santa, his reindeer and their present-laden sleigh with the help of www.noradsanta.org, a 3-D interactive website run annually by a joint US-Canadian military monitoring agency.
Having said earlier in the day that he was thinking of people "who are suffering from war -- we are thinking of Palestine, of Israel, of Ukraine", the pope struck a sombre tone during his Christmas Eve mass.
"Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world," the pope said.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
