midnight
Real Christmas comes to-morrow , on the sixth of January ; and to-night is right Christmas Eve . '' `` What makes you think so ? '' `` All the old folks says so , for one thing , and they knows better than young ones ; and the plants and the beasts knows better still . Tonight 's the night when the elder blossoms out at midnight , and the cattle kneels down and prays , -- anybody can hear 'em a-lowing and mowing if they stay awake to listen . '' I have a hazy recollection of the English calendar having been changed and set forward eleven days in the middle of the eighteenth century , and of the mass of the people in England and the colonies refusing to accept the new date for Christmas . This survival in the mountain country is indeed remarkable . I sat keeping watch beside Nucky when the clock struck midnight , and got up and went to the window to look and listen .