Freddy Arbuthnot on Christmas

 ‘Great bore, Christmas, isn’t it? All the people one hates most gathered together in the name of goodwill and all that.’

Freddy Arbuthnot to Lord Peter Wimsey

Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison (orig, pub. 1930), ch. 12

Christmas dinner at the Marches'

There never was such a Christmas dinner as they had that day. The fat turkey ws a sight to behold, when Hannah sent him up, stuffed, browned, and decorated. So was the plum pudding, which melted in one's mouth, likewise the jellies, in which Amy reveled like a fly in the honeypot. Everything turned out well, which was a mercy, Hannah said, "for my mind was that flustered, Mum, that it's a merrycle I didn't roast the pudding, and stuff the turkey with raisins, let alone bilin' of it in a cloth."

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1869), ch. 22

Christmas before the mast

Thursday, Dec. 25th. This day was Christmas, but it brought us no holiday. The only change was that we had a "plum duff" for dinner, and the crew quarrelled with the steward because he did not give us our usual allowance of molasses to eat with it. He thought the plums would be a substitute for the molasses, but we were not to be cheated out of our rights in this way.

Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast (1840), ch. VIII

Friday, December 25th. This day was Christmas; and as it rained all day long, and there were no hides to take in, and nothing especial to do, the captain gave us a holiday, (the first we had had since leaving Boston,) and plum duff for dinner. The Russian brig, following the Old Style, had celebrated their Christmas eleven days before; when they had a grand blow-out and (as our men said) drank, int he forecastle, a barrel of gin, ate up a bag of tallow, and made a soup of the skin.

Id., ch. XXVI