The student boarders at the Ursuline convent carefully prepared the ceremony of the procession of the Christ Child for Quebec nuns. Dressed in white robes and wearing crowns, the young girls (of whom the littlest had the signal honour of carrying the basket in which the wax Jesus lay) formed a procession and moved slowly forward towards the crèche in the chapel singing Cher petit frère. This hymn, to the tune of an old melody, was the work of Sister Saint Mary Simon.
This custom ceased in 1935 when parents began to collect their children for Christmas. Before then, the school holiday began on December 27 and ended the day before Epiphany. |
Other churches also had their processions of the Christ Child as this British traveller recounts who, between 1780 and
1790, attended a Midnight Mass in Canada:
"Around 10 o’clock in the evening, a cradle was ceremoniously carried right into the choir of the church in Quebec. At
midnight, a wax Jesus was placed in it with great ceremony and then rocked throughout the whole mass to the sound of
carols.
Today, this ceremony still takes place in some Canadian provinces particularly in Edmonton , Alberta where many
Catholic parishioners gather together for the procession of Saint-Joachim.