It’s part of a popular annual service called Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
High-profile citizens such as Times Colonist columnist Jack Knox and CTV News anchor Hudson Mack will read passages at the Sunday service.
Money collected will support Oasis Society, a support agency for homeless people.
For three years, Christ Church has commissioned a new carol for the service.
This year’s carol, The Legend of the Bird, commemorates the stone robin sitting high atop one of the cathedral’s pillars.
Christ Church music director Canon Michael Gormley asked his friend Stephanie Martin, assistant professor of music at York University in Toronto, to write the lyrics and music.
After hearing of the robin statue, Martin chose it as her subject.
She will be in Victoria on Sunday to hear it performed.
Christ Church commissioned the little statue after the spring of 1928, when the cathedral was under construction.
Lucy, the 13-year-old daughter of stone mason Edmund Mertton, was shown a robin’s nest built inside the then-open roof.
When the foreman found out about the nest, he instructed the workers to leave it alone.
Lucy checked regularly until all the eggs hatched and the nestlings successfully fledged.
This past September, Lucy, now Lucy Haapala, returned to Victoria and attended a service at Christ Church, where she and the robin were honoured.
For parishioner Ian Hamilton, the old story, part of a celebrated building, and the new tradition of a yearly commissioned carol for Christmas are all part of a continuing tradition of outreach.
“There is this tremendous connection between history and tradition and modern-day contemporary outreach,” said Hamilton.
“And if people come and hear the carol and read the words, they will see it’s about reaching out to the poor and the homeless.”
