HD Nanayakkara still remembers how his heart sank when he was told their project was cancelled. It would have set a Guinness World Record as the tallest Christmas tree ever erected – standing at a towering 100 metres.

The metal, cone-shaped skeleton was to be dressed with green mesh and adorned with an estimated one million red, gold, blue and silver hand-painted pine cones, lit up with some 800,000 twinkling LED lights.

A spectacular 20-foot-tall star – weighing some 60 kilogrammes – would have been placed on top. There was even going to be a 20-foot-long Santa Claus figure on a sledge – complete with reindeer right alongside it.

The foundations had already been laid; the trunk and the first ring were complete. The giant star lay forlornly propped up near a pile of discarded pine cones. The rest of the tree lay in pieces around the site overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Galle Face is one of Colombo’s most popular promenades, and people from all over the island of Sri Lanka had been expected to come and admire the tree.

A small band of workers from the port had first proposed the idea to Arjuna Ranatunga, the country’s minister of ports and shipping.

Now many, including the port engineers who had offered structural advice, have chosen to work overtime on building the tree for no pay.

“We knew even if we cancelled the project at that time, no money would have been saved,” Nanayakkara told Al Jazeera. “All the parts were complete; it was only our work left.”

“The Cardinal would never tell anybody they could not put up a Christmas tree. No one has to ask him for permission. This has been interpreted in the wrong way,” Reverend Edmond Thilakaratne, the archdiocesan director of social communications, told Al Jazeera.

“What Cardinal Ranjith reiterates is that as we celebrate Christmas, we must always be mindful of the poor and the needy.”

“I think it was just a misunderstanding,” says Ranatunga, explaining that his administration wants to promote interreligious harmony, which includes finding ways like this to celebrate key festivals of all the island’s various faiths.

He believes this project has resonated with people and says there are so many donations coming in that they are considering redirecting any surplus to the president’s National Kidney Fund for patients with chronic kidney disease.