Notwithstanding the supernatural terrors of this night, groups of young men and women from all parts of the country flock into town after their day’s work is done, and assemble in crowds in the market place, where they regale on oranges and roasted chestnuts. The public-houses profit greatly by their presence; rendered valiant by their potations, and feeling security in numbers, they return home at a late hour, singing in chorus some interminable ditty, which, if goblins have any ear for music, must certainly have the effect of driving them far away. By those in easy circumstances Christmas Day is now celebrated much as it is in England. The houses are decorated with holly and other evergreens--the same substantial fare loads the hospitable board, presents of meat or geese are sent to poor dependants, and families who are dispersed re-assemble at the same table. It is still customary for the poorer classes among the peasantry, who at any other season of the year would be ashamed to beg, to go about from door to door some days before Christmas, asking for alms under the name of “Noel,” in order to be able to add something to their scanty fare; and before grates and sea-coal became so common it was usual to reserve a large log of wood to be burned on the hearth at Christmas. This was called “le tronquet de Noel” and is evidently the same as the Yule log of the North of England. In the neighbouring island of Alderney, one of the favourite diversions in the merry meetings at this festive season was the assuming of various disguises. Porphyrius, a native of Tyre, and a disciple of Longinus in the year 223 speaks of the “Feast of Mithras, or the Sun, where men were in the habit of disguising themselves as all sorts of animals--lions, lionesses, crows;” and St. Sampson, on his second visit to Jersey, gave gilded medals to the children on condition that they stayed away from these fêtes; so says Mr. Métivier in one of his early letters to the _Gazette_. On the last night of the year it was customary (and the practice has not altogether fallen into desuetude) for boys to dress up a grotesque figure, which they called “Le vieux bout de l’an,” and after parading it through the streets by torch-light with the mock ceremonial of a funeral procession, to end by burying it on the beach, or in some other retired spot, or to make a bonfire and burn it.[13]