As the year 1789 drew to a close, the cast in the revolutionary drama could not have known that a temporary breathing spell was about to be written into the script. With the October Days having erupted approximately three months after the July Revolution, many Parisians were quite prepared to believe that another major outburst was going to occur sometime around the beginning of the new year. In mid-December, tensions rose as the capital was engulfed by a new wave of rumors of aristocratic plotting. And since the connection between aristocratic plotting and pre-emptive popular action against such plotting had already become firmly imprinted in public consciousness by the events of July and October, this new rash of rumors was itself probably taken as a signal that the revolutionary thermometer was about to jump again.

The rumors of mid-December focused on Christmas as the day on which a great counter-revolutionary uprising was to be launched. As Desmoulins reported: “Rumor generally had it that on the day and night of the Nativity, our venerable Clergy and Aristocracy would be reborn out of their ashes.” Or as Loustalot more matter-of-factly stated: “Christmas night was designated for the execution of their horrible schemes.” Meanwhile, Gorsas revealed on December 26 that he hadn't published these rumors for fear of creating too much popular excitement. Furthermore, all the Parisian rumors were accompanied by reports from Dauphiné that a plot hatched by Artois and the émigrés would be carried out on Christmas Day.