NEW ORLEANS ‹ Harold Hansford didn¹t make it home for Christmas.

He just visited.

Hansford spent part of Christmas morning wandering around the gutted house in the New Orleans suburb of Arabi that he, his wife and son called home for the past 17 years.

³You get 14 feet of water in your house and it don¹t leave much,² said Hansford, who had managed to salvage a few Christmas decorations from the attic. ³We always fixed the house up for Christmas.²

This year it¹s decorated with the marks painted on by rescue workers as they made their way through the neighborhood looking for people and bodies.

³I never imagined Christmas like this,² he said. ³Not much of left, but we¹ll be back.²

Huge swaths of New Orleans remained empty Christmas Day. Streets that filled with flood water after Hurricane Katrina crushed the city Aug. 29 were still stretches of smashed houses and debris.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where most of the dead were found following the levee break, a few sad relics of Christmas past stand forlornly among the wreckage ‹ a waterlogged stuffed Santa, a headless angel. A wrecked car has ³Merry Christmas² spray painted on the side and a stuffed reindeer in the driver¹s seat.

Cheryl Anderson was only too happy to get up at 2 a.m. Christmas morning to begin cooking in the tiny kitchen of the trailer she shares with her husband, son and three grandchildren. Even the location, on the grounds of Metairie Cemetery, where her husband works, didn¹t bother her.

Anderson, 46, floated away from her house on a door when the water hit 9 feet. She spent two days on an overpass, then took shelter at the Superdome before being evacuated to Birmingham, Ala. Her family was scattered across four states and it took her months to find them.

³I didn¹t think I¹d live to see this Christmas,² Anderson said. ³Now we¹re having everything like a regular Christmas ‹ the gumbo, the ham, all of it. Everything except a tree. That won¹t fit in the trailer.²

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

³This means everything. We¹ve come home,² said Lila Southall, the minister¹s wife. ³My house is gone but I¹m still home for Christmas.²

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

Only a handful of people swayed in the pews to the music on Christmas morning, calling out ³Amen² to the pastor¹s words, but that number will grow, Southall said. The church in the Uptown section, several miles west of the French Quarter, will run a bus from Baton Rouge each Sunday to bring members back for the 7:30 a.m. service.

³It¹s a grand feeling to be back home,² said Southall, whose house was submerged in 8 feet of water after the hurricane. ³We¹re back together. We¹ll go on from here.²