At one o'clock on Christmas morning, a family of English converts sings Christmas carols under Joseph's window. Joseph's family and boarders in the Mansion House are awake and listen to the music. Joseph blesses the singers. In the afternoon Joseph has 50 couples over for Christmas dinner.
During the evening a long-haired man breaks in and acts "like a Missourian.." The police are called, but when Joseph sees the man, he realizes, to his "great surprise and joy untold," it is Orrin Porter Rockwell, just returned to Nauvoo from his Missouri imprisonment. Rockwell then eats and drinks and relates his Missouri experiences, after which Joseph blesses him, saying, "I prophesy, in the name of the Lord, that you—Orrin Porter Rockwell—so long as you shall remain loyal and true to thy faith, need fear no enemy. Cut not thy hair and no bullet or blade can harm thee!"
[Conkling, Christopher J., Joseph Smith Chronology]
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