Christmas Eve procession was a tradition in Madison

This historic Nativity set was photographed in front of the statue of St. Joseph holding the Christ Child at St. Patrick Chapel in Madison. (Submitted photo)

By Michael Moore and Mary Ann Wyand (Special to The Criterion)

MADISON—Childhood memories of Christmas Eve Mass at St. Patrick Church in 1938 are still vivid for Prince of Peace parishioner Marie (Behr) Hoskins.

Her family lived in a house across the street from the church, which became St. Patrick Chapel after St. Mary, St. Michael and St. Patrick parishes in Madison and St. Anthony Parish in nearby China were consolidated as Prince of Peace Parish by Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein in 1993.

On Christmas Eve 70 years ago, Hoskins recalled, ­children in the parish dressed as angels for a procession into the church with a figurine of the baby Jesus at the start of midnight Mass.

“The weather was freezing cold,” she said. “We did not have coats, but white robes. We all had ropes of silver ­tinsel around our necks crossed in the front and around our waists. The sponsors made a halo of the silver rope around our heads. We marched to the church. … I was 6 years old. … We were holding unlit candles. We did not light them until we got inside the church. We did not need light. It was a cold, starry night.”

At the church, “two real tall doors were opened and we processed in,” Hoskins remembered. “… The last one in was the one who carried Jesus. … My sister, Helen, was an angel after me. … Father Joseph Brown would be up front at the altar looking down with the servers as we marched in. After Mass, the children were so sleepy that the parents rounded them up and carried them home.”

Fifteen to 25 children dressed up as angels for the Christmas Eve procession every year, she said, and in later years they carried small flashlights instead of candles. This tradition continued until St. Patrick’s Church was merged into Prince of Peace Parish 14 years ago.

Hoskins still serves as a lector for Communion ­services at her parish church.

Located adjacent to Pope John XXIII School and Shawe Memorial Jr./Sr. High School, St. Patrick Chapel is used often for school Masses, Hispanic liturgies, weddings, funerals, Communion services and rosaries.

Among the traces of Christmas past at St. Patrick Chapel is the historic manger built by Wendel Jacobs in the 1920s. It is assembled in mid-December every year then the figurines of Joseph, Mary and the animals are placed on straw. On Christmas Eve, the figure of the infant Jesus is reverently placed on a bed of straw.

The figurines trace their existence back to the old St. Patrick’s Church built by Father Hyppolytus Dupontavice in 1853. Jacobs brought them to the new church in 1910.

In the 1950s, the figures of Joseph and Mary were looking a little worse for wear so parishioner Bertha Schafer paid to have them refurbished.

About 30 years later, Alice Cassity, president of St. Patrick’s Altar Society, and parishioner Delores Hellman arranged the purchase of new images of the Holy Family from a store in Louisville for use at St. Patrick Chapel.

The old figurines dating back to the late 1800s were donated to Shawe Memorial High School for display there during Advent.

People die and church buildings are replaced, yet this parish community—which was founded by a French priest to restore the Irish railroad workers back to their faith—still maintains traces of the customs begun by the Irish workers and German farmers who migrated there.

(Michael Moore is a member of Prince of Peace Parish in Madison.) †