A Christmas Pilgrimage in New Orleans

The congregation of First Emmanuel Baptist Church drove from Baton Rouge, La., Houston and other points far and wide on Christmas, then walked past collapsed buildings and piles of storm wreckage to worship in their church for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

“This means everything. We’ve come home,” said Lila Southall, wife of the church’s minister. “My house is gone, but I’m still home for Christmas.”

The 118-year-old church has lost much of its roof, part of the ceiling hangs precariously and the soggy carpet has not been replaced. But the magnificent stained-glass windows survived unscathed, and so did most of the church’s 1,200 members.

A handful of people swayed in the pews to the music Christmas morning, calling out “amen” to the pastor’s words, but the number will grow, Southall said.

The church, several miles west of the French Quarter, will run a bus from Baton Rouge each Sunday to bring members for the 7:30 a.m. service.

“It’s a grand feeling to be back home,” said Southall, whose house was submerged in 8 feet of water after the hurricane. “We’re back together. We’ll go on from here.”

Christmas was a lonely time in much of New Orleans. Miles of houses stood deserted. Toppled signs, flooded cars, boats that rescued people trapped by flooding were scattered along streets, in yards and parking lots.

East of the French Quarter in the Lower 9th Ward, block after block of homes sat destroyed. At a crushed house beside a repaired breach in the London Avenue canal, someone had spray-painted “Merry Christmas” on a wrecked car, and a stuffed reindeer sat in the driver’s seat.

In St. Bernard Parish, where water had covered most buildings, Charlie and Andrea Licciardi watched daughters Alixandria, 5, and Abigale, 4, open presents inside the trailer they have been calling home. The girls pointed out the skylight that they figured Santa had used to bring them gifts.

“We haven’t slept in a house since the hurricane and haven’t had a real bath, the kind you can sink into and relax,” Andrea Licciardi said. “But we’re a step closer.”