Gaah! Characters!

So, I'm at that same point where it happened before.
I've reached the editing point in my story where I really need to get the Green Team introduced.
During my first draft, I passed this point without realizing it. Instead of going back to add it in, I decided to finish my first draft and go back and add all the character development in later.
Except "later" is now.
Gaaah! There's too much!
Too many characters, and I need to introduce them all in ways that aren't lame, and that make everyone kind of start to bond.
And it doesn't help that the two characters I'm working on are hard to get across. One is incredibly quiet, and the other just kind of goes along with anything and doesn't really get excited about anything (usually).
But I don't just want to have totally random meetings and conversations between the missions. The meetings should have actual meaning.
But hooow? TT^TT
I'll probably send the Green and Red teams to a festival, which will help some. But I have to time the festival right. I want to do New Years. But in the story timeline, that's several months away. Plus I'm not sure exactly where to put New Years, since the Asian New Years is different from the European New Years. But in my world, everyone would celebrate New Years on about the same day. So I guess I could do a smaller festival thing on the Asian New year, and keep the big festival on the usual new year... or maybe visa versa?
I'd like to do a day of the dead thing too, possibly. Because I was thinking about working that in. Maybe If I go through with that, some of the other character stuff will fall into place. And some more culture stuff.
Sigh.
But either way, the festivals would still happen after most of the people had met already.
Which brings me back where I started...