I drove down from LeMarchant Road to Water Street last week and in doing so I had to pass St. Patrick’s, the church of my old west end parish. The now empty grey stone building glowered down on me. Somewhere in that ancient building was the pew by the pillar where our family knelt each week for Sunday Mass. I stopped the car on what was a cold morning and got out for a look around. There was the church itself and the deanery where the priest lived. There was as well the old Presentation Convent building. The school, by the church, still operates but it is no longer run by the Presentation Sisters. It was all part of St. Patrick’s.

With Christmas coming on last week, I was reminded how important a part of our lives that church was. It was the spiritual centrepiece of the season to us. The highlight of Christmas, of course, was Midnight Mass. We went as a family and sang the carols, sometimes in Latin, and did all the rest. Then we walked home to Pleasant Street where there was a steak dinner already cooked on the stove waiting for us. We called it steak, but it was really stewing meat from Casey the butcher down on New Gower or Metcalf and Roberts just a little further up the road. There were butcher shops and fruit stores all over the west end in those days.

Religion was a much bigger part of our lives then. For the Christmas season we had an Advent wreath at school and another in our home. That is a wreath made of fir boughs with four candles on it. The wreath was lit with special prayers during the four weeks leading up to Christmas. There was also, you may remember, a concentrated effort in those days to “Keep Christ in Christmas”. The campaign was organized by the Knights of Columbus and pushed hard in the Catholic schools. That Keep Christ in Christmas campaign seems to have largely disappeared. By the way, woe betide any young student at our school who dared shorten the word “Christmas” into Xmas. Justice was swift although I’m not sure God actually had a problem with it.

Another part of Christmas I remember as being important were the Christmas raffles. They were run in December by various religious organizations. They were fundraisers. The one I vividly remember would be the Mount Cashel Raffle. It was run by the Irish Christian Brothers and some of the floor workers and helpers at the event were senior boys from the Mount Cashel Orphanage. I always found that particular raffle sad because at the heart of it were little boys who weren’t at home for Christmas. I am aware of that wonderful line from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol; “It is at Christmas that Want is most keenly felt and Abundance rejoices.

Standing this December in front of St. Patrick’s Church I can almost hear the ancient bells now silent that once boomed out over the west end of St. John’s. So much has happened over the years but having said that I will not be haunted by the Ghost of Christmas past but instead revel in the Ghost of Christmas present.

I look at the spire of St. Patrick’s and remember growing up in its shadow. They are happy memories from my formative years. Things have changed. I won’t have an Advent wreath but in another parish on Christmas Eve, I will still be at a Midnight Mass.

You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]