Chil­dren and their par­ents ap­plaud­ed as the lights on the tow­er­ing Christ­mas tree and Cr�che in the Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian school yard were turned on, on Fri­day night.

The an­nu­al light­ing was wit­nessed by hun­dreds who gath­ered around the tree for a re­li­gious ser­vice to mark the light­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

The au­di­ence was ser­e­nad­ed by the school choir, led by choir mas­ters and mu­si­cians Vic­tor Chu­ra­man and Kr­ish­na Kalicher­an, which per­formed a med­ley of 25 Christ­mas car­ols.

Guests were al­so en­ter­tained by in­stru­men­tal ver­sions of the well loved car­ols by Joshua Re­grel­lo on the pan, Jared Jag­gain on the gui­tar and a vi­o­lin duo, led by Anslem Wal­ters.

Of­fer­ing bless­ings, Rev­erend Daniel Teelucks­ingh re­mind­ed the con­gre­ga­tion that the Cr�che and Christ­mas tree were sym­bols of hope and a re­minder of the pres­ence of God with us.

He told the boys and girls sit­ting around the tow­er­ing Christ­mas tree, of the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis which he said was rem­i­nis­cent of the great de­pres­sion of the 1930s.

He told them they would have to get used to the word re­ces­sion, which he de­scribed as a fright­en­ing word.

"But re­ces­sion or no re­ces­sion," said Teelucks­ingh, "we are go­ing to have a mer­ry Christ­mas, be­cause Christ­mas is a sto­ry of hope, it is a sto­ry of de­liv­er­ance, it is a sto­ry of par­ents, who what ever their dif­fi­cul­ties, make sure their chil­dren have a mer­ry Christ­mas."

The tree, a gift from busi­ness­man Primus Per­sad, has at­tract­ed vis­i­tors from across the coun­try in the sev­en years it has been on dis­play at Christ­mas time.