Aizawl: After a grand Christmas, Mizoram on Thursday celebrated New Year with religious and traditional fervour marking it with community feast and church service.
Thanks giving ceremony, worship service, prayers and congregational singing (zaikhawm) were held in churches across the state on Thursday as part of the celebration.
Usually, New Year is celebrated for two days in Christian majority Mizoram.
Several churches belonging to different denomination, including Presbyterian Church of India (PCI) and Baptist Church of Mizoram (BCM) particularly in villages and some small towns held community feasts on Thursday, while most churches in Aizawl and other towns will hold the same to mark the closure of the New Year celebration on Friday.
All churches in the state held mid-night services on Wednesday night to bid farewell to the outgoing year (2025) and welcome the new one (2026).
Some indigenous churches in rural areas also held church services and community feasts on Wednesday to bid farewell to the outgoing year (2025).
On Wednesday, the state tourism department held a tourism event at Sakawrhmuituai tlang (Sakawrhmuituai Hills) near Aizawl to witness and send off the last sunset of 2025.
State tourism minister Lalnghinglova Hmar, who attended the event said the government is making efforts to make Mizoram appealing tourist destination during winter.
Some time, New Year celebration lasted for more than a week in some local churches.
The government has banned firecrackers, sky lantern and other pyrotechnic materials to ensure peaceful and pollution-free celebration.
However, defying the prohibitory order, people bursted firecrackers, rockets and displayed fireworks in Aizawl and other towns to welcome New Year.
When only a few minutes were left for the new year to ring in, fireworks and rockets lit up the sky in Aizawl and other towns making a spectacular scenery.
Bidding the outgoing year and welcoming the new one with a crash-boom-bang celebration has become more or less a tradition for the Mizos to light up moods though it has no significant relation with the Christian way of celebrating New Year.
Aizawl Superintendent of Police (SP) Zosangliana told a news agency that no person has been arrested for bursting firecracker.
He said that no law and order problem has been reported in the state during New Year celebration on Thursday.