From the 1940s to the 1960s, on 24 December, students would be waking up to canticles and hymns through loud-speakers and would be treated to an ameliorated breakfast with brioche and hot chocolate.
From the 1940s to the 1970s, students were alternately required to chant or read aloud from the official academic corpora unanimously agreed upon by the institution's on-site officiating abbots and priests. They were standing in front of a lectern in the small refectory and the dining hall on which books were placed following liturgical traditions. Being designated cantor or precentor was also used as punishment for misbehaving pupils. Main works were:
Each year, Saint-Michel's students commemorate the Armistice of May 8, 1945 but also the bombing of Solesmes on May 9, 1944 which greatly impacted the institution. From February to June 1944, the Allies intensified their destructive efforts on roads and rails to isolate the Normandy landings and to dupe the Germans into believing that this landing would take place in the nearer Pas-de-Calais. General Eisenhower encapsulated those successful bombings "as the greatest contribution to the success of Overlord" (June 6, 44). On May 9, 1944; the 416th Bomb Group successfully destroyed the Aarschot railway station between Brussels and Antwerp with several Douglas Boston III Havocs each carrying four 250-kg bombs and the 409th Bomb Group caused death and destruction in Solesmes with the same equipment. On May 9, at around 8:15 am, the air alert loud sirens prompted all children who went to school to go back home and around 10:15, two explosions were heard as four bombs were accidentally detached from the freight deck of an aircraft and landed on the Chemin de Vertigneulof the Institution Saint-Michel causing the first victims. A fifth bomb will not explode and will be destroyed a few days later by the Germans, near Chant des Oiseaux. Seventy bombs exploded in the city-center killingfifty-eight people including twenty-two children and the destruction of ninety-seven buildings while the wounded were transferred to the hospital of Le Cateau. The town of Solesmes received the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France). Historians revealed that it was the train station that was targeted with its ramifications to the sugar refinery and the electro-tubes. The American airmen had orders; when they were not carrying out their mission; to drop their bombs on secondary targets. Moreover, at 3500 m altitude the accuracy of a shot was 1 km but there was barely 500 meters between the station and the city-center.[9]
In June 2018, Saint-Michel's students were awarded for their participation in the National Contest for the Defense and Illustration of the French language organized by the members association of the Order of Academic Palms (French: Ordre des Palmes académiques).[16]
During the summer holidays, the Saint-Michel infrastructures host the children summer camps convened by the Communauté de communes du Pays Solesmois and it has also hosted the École Saint-Joseph (Solesmes)'s end-of-the-year show for over twenty-five years as of 2018.
^Pierrard, Pierre (1978). Les Diocèses de Cambrai et de Lille. Paris: Beauchesne.
^Paul Bertrand; Bruno Dumézil; Xavier Hélary; Sylvie Joye; Charles Mériaux; Isabelle Rosé (2008). Pouvoirs, Église et société dans les royaumes de France, de Bourgogne et de Germanie aux Xe et XIe siècles (888-vers 1110). Ellipses. pp. 170–174.
^Destombes, Cyrille Jean (1891). Histoire de l'église de Cambrai (Tome III: 1562–1802). Lille: Desclée.