Seven Cakes – Though Dirt Poor, They Had Cake For Christmas
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Life during the depression in rural Alabama wasn’t too different from any other time of year for my people. You see, they were sharecroppers – dirt farmers who didn’t even own their own dirt. They wouldn’t have known if the world had been prosperous, their lives had always been a struggle of hard work and all too often relying on hope for the next meal.
This time of year, there wasn’t a whole lot to be thankful for, other than the fact that there wasn’t any cotton to pick. For them, winter was as bleak as the Alabama landscape. In Alabama, we are not often afforded the sight of glistening snow resting atop hills and trees in a winter wonderland. Here, the sky just gets gray and the landscape browns – bare trees, brown grass, and muddy earth where fields lay in wait for spring as far as the eye can see.
My great grandmother had four children and they all lived in a small shack house. Wood was a precious thing and that meant only heating one room. My grandmamma says “it got so cold at night. Mama would heat rocks and wrap ‘em up in old towels and things to put in bed with us but we still got so cold. You didn’t dare get out of that bed unless you just had to”.
Families would work all year for the farmer in exchange for monthly rations of staples such as dried beans, flour, and the occasional bit of meat. At harvest’s end they’d get a percentage of profits on the cotton, but all of the staples which had been provided for them were then deducted from the final cost, leaving families in a continued state of dependence upon the farm owner for enough food to survive the winter.
But with winter came Christmas, and my great grandmother always did manage to make it special despite their hardships. Lela’s life had always been a hard one. Growing up one of nine children in Jackson County, she had spent her childhood traveling from farm to farm with her parents and siblings, picking cotton and tending to whatever crops the farm owner decided to plant. Now she had four kids to provide a Christmas for and keeping them fed and clothed took about all she had and then some.
But she never failed them. She always came through, especially at Christmastime.
Lela squirreled away ingredients all year long. A little sugar here, some dried apples there, maybe some raisins and a bit of cinnamon. After the kids went to bed on Christmas Eve, she’d set to work. Using only what she had on hand and no recipes to speak of, Lela would stay awake all night baking cakes in her little wood stove. She’d make an apple stack cake, a raisin cake, yellow cake with chocolate icing, peanut butter cake, and so on. There was never a plan beyond that of needing to make seven of them – one for each day from Christmas until the New Year.
The next morning, four sets of eyes would open wide and four sets of feet would hurry out of their cold beds into the only heated room in the house where their faces would light up at seeing the bounty of seven cakes sitting on the worn kitchen table. I know how their faces looked because my grandmother’s still lights up the same way now, some seventy years later, when she talks about those cakes. The kids took turns being the one to choose the cake they ate that day and between the six of them and any company who happened by, they made short work of it and were ready to start with a new one the next morning.
Most kids today would consider having cakes baked for you as your only Christmas gift to be a disappointment. But amid all of the wrappings and bows, gift sets and feasts, I hope your Christmas somehow manages to be as magical as it was in that little sharecroppers house in Alabama during the depression, when four kids woke up with stars in their eyes at finding seven cakes.
Gratefully,
Christy
For a little Christmas gift click here
Merry Christmas from Southern Plate!
Click HERE for a printable PDF of this story
My grandmother made Apple Stake Cake, too, only she called it fruit cake. It had many stacks as each layer was split in half. the dried apples were cooked in water and produced a brown apple sauce and to it was added cinnamon and usually either nutmeg or allspice. She would put the apple mixture between each layer and also on the top of the cake which was 6 or 8 stacks high and it was iced all around the sides. We liked it and the cake had to be saved for 24 hours before it was eaten to allow the apple sauce to soak into the cake layer. This was an old recipe out of Ky. My grandparents lived in little shacks in Ky. but grandpa got a job with the railroad and went to Tennessee. They grew their own veggies and had apple trees. They dried applies behind the stove and also dried green beans on string behind the stove. They never had central heat even though they moved to a big house. There was a wood burner in the living room which also was a bedroom though there were other rooms in the house in their last days. The kids bought them an oil heater and they sat their chairs in front of that. /the bed was to their back, the sofa and other chairs were to the sides and the sewing machine was on the other side. Grandma had a treddle machine but Grandpa bought her an electric zig zag which she wouldn’t use so he did the mending and also he started to doing quilts in the winter as he had his garden in the summer. He did the canning in later life, too, as Grandma was sick. Grandma used to help can . Grandpa still canned on the wood burning stove rather than the electric one in the other kitchen. When my mom was growing up they had a 3 room house and had 9 kids = 5 boys and 4 girls. The kids all lived in the one room and living room and bedroom was where Grandparents lived. I was born there as well. They always had room for everyone. Two brothers )(one being my grandfather) married 2 sisters (one being Grandma). Food was always great at Grandma’s house. We had fresh veggies and their home canned vegetables. It is surprising that they bought their apple butter rather than making it themselves. No one’s green beans tasted as good as theirs. I sure wished I had learned more about gardening.
Oh, and thank you for the printable gift!!!
This story brought tears to my eyes…I can so relate with my parents and grandparents. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you Brenda, I am glad you enjoyed it. I hope you had a Merry Christmas!
This is a beautiful story and for me , not so hard to relate to. I was born at the very beginning of WW2 and food and supply rationing was the thing. People had to be creative to make up for the shortages of everyday items. They were glad to make the sacrifice so that our precious soldiers over in Europe could have the things they needed. We are so blessed today and with an over abundance that too often you dont see true thankfulness. I am thankful for a mother and grandmother who always came through at Christmas with goodies and a few toys for us. Daddy and Papaw have to be included in that too.
Merry Christmas, Christy & family and the Southern Plate family.
I can remember the stories my mom, told how her grandmother had to live to survive. You wonder how they could survive.
My parents always filled our stockings with an orange, apple, nuts, candy cane, and thin mints. Even though I didn’t understand then why our stockings were filled with those goodies only now can I fully appreciate those cherished memories and the fact our parents wanted to share and keep their childhood memories alive with hopes that we would pass them down generation to generation.
Brings back memories of my own childhood. Grateful to have food on the table at Christmas and loved ones nearby.