Seven Cakes – Though Dirt Poor, They Had Cake For Christmas
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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
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Christy, I enjoy your website so much. My husband’s people comes from Jackson County, Alabama and were sharecroppers so your story is much like his. My people were from Arkansas but the same story. It was a very hard life but so much love and togetherness. My mom would warm towels by the space heater and bring them to the bed and wrap my brother and my feet, but I am sure she got this idea from her mom heating the bricks from the wood stove when she grew up. We never had warm rooms all over the house, just the living room which always had a bed in it and the kitchen. What fond memories and I love it when you tell your stories as it brings it right home to me. Thanks again and happy new year.
What precious memories Betty, they speak of love in abundance!! Happy New Year to You!!
Christy, thank you so much for the story and the recipe. My mom wanted fried apple pie yesterday morning but I have not worked too much with pie dough. But I remembered seeing apple fritters on your site and got the recipe. Easy peasy and delicious! You’re a keeper for sure. Many blessings to you and your family.
I am so glad to hear that you enjoyed the recipe!! Blessings to you and yours!!
Your story really touched my heart, (as do they always). We were raised as Louisiana sharecroppers kids and it was hard. Much the same as the story you tell, but everybody was basically like us so we didn’t notice it too much.
Christmas was and is very special. My best to you and yours.
Christmas is a magical time isn’t it Jan?! What kind of crops?
My parents gre up in the old South, just differently. My granmother was born in Feb 1891, on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma territory. My grandfather fell in love with her when he set eyes on her, but had to wait until she was grown, then married her on Christmas day. Their life was hard, with a wood cookstove, and a chimney with double hearths, and had 11 children. Momma remembered the Christmas she got crayons, along with some fruit, as so special.
Daddy’s father was different, moving them often, as all 9 of them came, and they were often left alone with their wonderful mother trying to make the best of it. He remembered a winter, maybe Christmas as they never knew it as children, when he was a small boy, taking a hatchet and cutting a pine sapling they dragged on the porch in the snow. They cut lengths of it at a time to feed their ownly heat, a wood stove.
In later years, my parents loved Christmas, lavishing so many great memories on us. But still the best are those of how they grew up, and still were able to share love, warmth, fun, gifts, humor, and family with their children.
Christy, your stories and recipes are like Christmas gifts all year round. Thank you for always offering us some thoughtful perspective along with something delicious. Merry Christmas to you and all your family!
My grandparents were lucky that they could afford 2 little pigs in the spring and raised them on leftovers all summer and then butchered them out in the fall. They kept one inthe smokehouse for their food and one they sold and it paid for the kids shoes for school and also a coat if they needed some. My dad on the other hand went to school with rags tied around his feet as he didn’t have shoes to wear in the winter.
The kids would sit on the porch on weekend evenings and people from around the area would come to listen to them play music and sing and would join in. A couple of the brothers played the guitar and the all sang. Mom and her sisters used to sing in church. Church was about the only place they could go and they had to be home the rest of the time. They had to quit school by about the 6th grade. Mom always encouraged us to go to school and do well as she really wanted to keep on at school.