Students at St. Francis Xavier enjoy their Christmas Dinner, a tradition that has been happening since 1979.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@MHNmocranker
Students at St. Francis Xavier School were able to take part in a longstanding tradition thanks to extra planning from parent volunteers.
The annual Christmas Dinner has been taking place at the school since 1979 and is usually held as a large group celebration before the Holidays.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, large gatherings have been cancelled and it was looking like the school was going to have to cancel the dinner for the first time since it was created.
Parent council started planning and was able to find a way to make the meal happen.
“Generally we’d cook at home or at the school and then serve students and staff together,” said parent council member Nichole Cunningham. “We were excited to still be able to offer a dinner this year, it just looked a little different.
“One of the parents suggested that we look into catering and we ended up going with the Patio Cafe.”
The school had individual meals delivered for staff and students, which spread joy during tough times.
“We were able to bring in a full turkey dinner, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and corn for everyone,” said Cunningham. “Everything was packaged individually and the student association was able to distribute it all.”
Cunningham says everyone involved was happy to keep the tradition alive.
“It was nice to have some normalcy and someone for everyone to look forward to,” she said. “We tried really hard to keep the tradition alive and to make sure we didn’t take a year off.
“We’ve had to cancel so many other things or postpone them, parent council just really felt like we needed to make this happen.”
Families were asked for donations this year to make the dinner happen, and stepped up in a big way.
“The support was amazing,” said Cunningham.
The school was able to feed 125 students and 19 staff members during the dinner.
