Arjuna Ranatunga is all set to gift his country a "World Record" on Christmas

Sri Lanka is moments away from entering the Guinness World Records as they surpassed the world record for the tallest artificial Christmas tree on Saturday after the initiative taken by former Sri Lankan World Cup winning captain Arjuna Ranatunga received the nod and blessings from Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Ranjith.

Ranatunga had initiated the plans to build the record-breaking tree in Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo but after receiving opposition from the Catholic Church that the money would better be spent on charity rather than the Christmas tree, they had to delay their plans for 10 days. “Initial opposition… meant a delay of about 10 days in our construction work,” event coordinator Mangala Gunasekera was quoted as saying by the AFP.

“Our target was 100 metres (328 feet), but construction delays forced us to cut down the height,” he said. As of Saturday morning, the tree was about 57 metres (187 feet) tall, two metres taller than the recorded biggest artificial Christmas tree which was erected in the Southern Chinese province of Guangzhou last year. The Sri Lankan claim is though subject to confirmation by the Guinness World Records.

Gunasekera revealed that around 600,000 coloured LED bulbs would be used to decorate the tree and besides that a six metre (20 foot) Santa will also be there along with a 12 metre (40-foot sleigh). “On Christmas eve, we will switch on the lights,” he added.

Ranatunga who captained his nation to their maiden and only World Cup victory to date in 1996 has been in the forefront of the project. Their main aim to raise funds from the artificial tree as a symbol of religious unity. The archbishop was initially against the project as he conceded that it would be “wasteful expenditure” and said the estimated cost of $200,000 would have been better spending on reducing poverty but the project was rescued by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe after he spoke with the archbishop to secure his blessings.

Sri Lanka is predominantly a Buddhist country but somewhere around 1.2 million [population out of the 21 million] are Catholics.