CHRISTMAS EVE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Christmas Eve

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/krˈɪsməs iv/ Listen

noun

Christmas n. An annual church festival (December 25) and in some States a legal holiday, in memory of the birth of Christ, often celebrated by a particular church service, and also by special gifts, greetings, and hospitality.

Christmas box.

(a)

A box in which presents are deposited at Christmas.

(b)

A present or small gratuity given to young people and servants at Christmas; a Christmas gift.

Christmas carol, a carol sung at, or suitable for, Christmas.

Christmas day. Same as Christmas.

Christmas eve, the evening before Christmas.

Christmas fern (Bot.), an evergreen North American fern (Aspidium acrostichoides), which is much used for decoration in winter.

Christmas flower, Christmas rose, the black hellebore, a poisonous plant of the buttercup family, which in Southern Europe often produces beautiful roselike flowers midwinter.

Christmas tree, a small evergreen tree, set up indoors, to be decorated with bonbons, presents, etc., and illuminated on Christmas eve.

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Etymology of 'Christmas Eve'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Christmas eve" Quotes from Famous Books

... Christmas season in Woodland was a notable one. We were to give a dinner to the converts. Many were the gifts of edibles. Christmas eve found Sister Simpson and me very busy preparing and cooking, aided by two prospective guests. While I was thus engaged, a message arrived requesting me to go quickly to a certain street and cabin, where a girl lay dying. Carrying ...

— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... Christmas seems to be only the day before the twenty-sixth day of December. It's the chap in the big city earning sixteen dollars a week, with no friends and few acquaintances, who finds himself with only fifty cents in his pocket on Christmas eve. He can't accept charity; he can't borrow; he knows no one who would invite him to dinner. I have a fancy that when the shepherds left their flocks to follow the star of Bethlehem there was a bandy-legged young fellow among them who was just learning the sheep business. So they said ...

— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... people cheered the racers as they came laboriously around the turn. The meet was engineered by some American, but, from a standpoint of close finishes, left much to be desired. The market-place on Christmas eve was lighted by a thousand lanterns, and the little people wandered among the booths, smoking their cigarettes and eating peanuts. Until early morning the incessant shuffling in the streets kept up, for every one had gone to midnight mass. Throughout the town the strumming of guitars, the voices of ...

— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... Cardinal Archbishop of Westminister:—A Plenary indulgence may be gained by all persons who—besides making a good Confession and received worthily the Holy Communion, and praying for the intention of his Holiness—shall, on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day, and on the following day, abstain from all intoxicating drinks. The faithful are earnestly exhorted to endeavor to obtain the Plenary Indulgence; and to offer up this little self-denial as an act of intercession, reparation, and expiation for those who sin against God by drunkenness ...

— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... children; For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest, And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses, And of the white Letiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children; And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable, And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell, And of the marvelous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes, With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of ...

— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

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