This hour is also auspicious for many actions, and in some sections of Germany it was thought that if one would go to the cross-roads between eleven and twelve on Christmas Day, and listen, he "would hear what most concerns him in the coming year." Another belief is that "if one walks into the winter-corn on Holy Christmas Eve, he will hear all that will happen in the village that year."
Christmas Eve or Christmas is the time when the oracles of the folk are in the best working-order, especially the many processes by which maidens are wont to discover the colour of their lover's hair, the beauty of his face and form, his trade and occupation, whether they shall marry or not, and the like.
The same season is most auspicious for certain ceremonies and practices (transferred to it from the heathen antiquity) of the peasantry of Europe in relation to agriculture and allied industries. Among those noted by Grimm are the following:—
On Christmas Eve thrash the garden with a flail, with only your shirt on, and the grass will grow well next year.
Tie wet strawbands around the orchard trees on Christmas Eve and it will make them fruitful.
On Christmas Eve put a stone on every tree, and they will bear the more.
Beat the trees on Christmas night, and they will bear more fruit.
In Herefordshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, in England, the farmers and peasantry "salute the apple-trees on Christmas Eve," and in Sussex they used to "worsle," i.e. "wassail," the apple-trees and chant verses to them in somewhat of the primitive fashion.
Some other curious items of Christmas folk-lore are the following, current chiefly in Germany.
If after a Christmas dinner you shake out the tablecloth over the bare ground under the open sky, crumbwort will grow on the spot.