midnight
And yet this Christmas day , in spite of Tom 's fresh delight in home , was not , he thought , somehow or other , quite so happy as it had always been before . The red berries were just as abundant on the holly , and he and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantlepieces and picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever , wedding the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-berried ivy . There had been singing under the windows after midnight , -- supernatural singing , Maggie always felt , in spite of Tom 's contemptuous insistence that the singers were old Patch , the parish clerk , and the rest of the church choir ; she trembled with awe when their carolling broke in upon her dreams , and the image of men in fustian clothes was always thrust away by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud . The midnight chant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of common days ; and then there were the smell of hot toast and ale from the kitchen , at the breakfast hour ; the favourite anthem , the green boughs , and the short sermon gave the appropriate festal character to the church-going ; and aunt and uncle Moss , with all their seven children , were looking like so many reflectors of the bright parlour-fire , when the church-goers came back , stamping the snow from their feet . The plum-pudding was of the same handsome roundness as ever , and came in with the symbolic blue flames around it , as if it had been heroically snatched from the nether fires , into which it had been thrown by dyspeptic Puritans ; the dessert was as splendid as ever , with its golden oranges , brown nuts , and the crystalline light and dark of apple-jelly and damson cheese ; in all these things Christmas was as it had always been since Tom could remember ; it was only distinguished , it by anything , by superior sliding and snowballs . Christmas was cheery , but not so Mr Tulliver . He was irate and defiant ; and Tom , though he espoused his father 's quarrels and shared his father 's sense of injury , was not without some of the feeling that oppressed Maggie when Mr Tulliver got louder and more angry in narration and assertion with the increased leisure of dessert .