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Though many years -- decades, really -- have passed since this ritual drew to a close, it remains one of my fondest memories of the holiday season.
Mom and Dad would send David and me to bed early on Christmas Eve, so we could rest up for the big event. Then they would wake us up around 10:30 or so, to get dressed and prepare ourselves for the one-mile drive to Sacred Heart Church.
I always enjoyed watching the 11 o’clock news out of Boston or Providence while we waited to hit the road because it usually featured a story tracking Santa’s progress on his travels from the North Pole. I seem to remember that the “data” for these reports came from NORAD, which provided an air of authenticity.
But the highlight was the Mass itself. The familiar Catholic rite was accented by the holiday decorations and the soaring voices of the choir in the loft that held our church’s magnificent organ.
In those days, Sacred Heart Church (l'Église du Sacré-Coeur), was a Franco-American parish whose parishioners had roots in Québec and, going further back in time, in France. Initially, the Mass was celebrated in Latin, and later in French. But the Christmas hymns always were French carols that my ancestors had brought from Québec to "la Nouvelle-Angleterre" (New England).
I grew up in a French-speaking home. We spoke French exclusively at our house until I started school, although I understood English early on. At St. Joan of Arc School (l'École Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc), the Sisters of the Assumption taught half a day of classes in English and the other half in French. So, hearing French carols sung in church was simply part of the natural order of things during my childhood.
Les anges dans nos campagnes (the French carol known in the English-speaking world as Angels We Have Head on High) was one of my favorites. So were Minuit, chrétiens (the original version of O Holy Night), Dans cette étable and Il est né, le divin Enfant, among others.
I remember the music from many French carols, and the lyrics of some of them, even though it has been many years since I’ve heard them sung in a church. More than anything else, it is French carols that instill the Christmas spirit in me, to this day. At least once before Christmas each year, I always listen to a cherished recording of them.
Sung as they are in my first language, these carols instantly transport me back in time. The years slip away. Once again I am an awestruck but delighted child sitting in L’Église du Sacré-Coeur in Southbridge, Massachusetts, attending midnight Mass on a dark and cold, but gloriously new, Christmas morning. The whole world was filled with joy and reverence during that service. Or so it seemed to an impressionable little boy.
