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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I picture the children on Christmas morning; what a sweet thought. Thanks for sharing this. I love it so much!
What a sad but beautiful story. I can just picture how happy they were when they woke up and can picture th ier smiling faces and see thier eyes so excited and big. Thank you Christy for telling us about a very special Christmas. May you and yours have a very blessed Christmas.
Merry Christmas Christy…I appreciate the story as much as the recipes. I’m 79. I remember stories from my mother and her brothers and sisters growing up. Dad, my grandfather and Mama, My grandmother raised 10 children to adulthood and Dad was a farmer. Until I lost them years ago in a flood I had pictures of a fire built outside with a #10 wash tub on it that Mama did the laundry in and another for rinsing the laundry and diapers hung on the barbed wire fence to dry and the ever present outhouse out back of the farmhouse.
Mama and Dad were married June 27, 1901, they ran off to get married..Dad was 20 and Mama 16 and great grandpa Clark hunted them for 6 months with a shotgun…he even went to to preacher and was told…”I’m sorry Mr. Clark, but that knot’s tied just as tight as any knot I’ve ever tied.” They went back home to see Mama’s family about 16 months later to let Mama’s family
see my newborn aunt Elva, she was 2 months old and to get all of Mama’s clothes she’d left behind…My great grandpa Clark was sitting on the back porch of his cabin doing some target practicing, shooting at a target on a tree down a gentle slope a ways a way and he told my grandfather, “Arthur, mosey down yonder & see if I hit the bullseye”. My grandfather told me that to turn his back on my great grandpa Clark and stroll down to that tree walking normally was the hardest thing he had ever done in his entire life.
It seems great grandpa Clark was a crack shot…and the way people would describe someone back then that was a crack shot they’s say he was so good he could shoot the wings of of a gnat. But Dad did it literally expecting a bullet in the back with each step…because my great grandpa knew he had hit the center and so did Dad and Dad expected a shot in the back with each step because great grandpa held grudges and was known to be mean when he’d been crossed. But Dad won his respect that day by casually strolling down and checking the target. Aren’t you glad that we don’t have to live in shacks as poor as they did back then and we’re blessed with modern appliances…I think it takes hearing stories of those days sometimes to put our hard times into proper perspective..
Oh my goodness, what a wonderful legacy and wonderful memories!!! Thank you so much for sharing them with me!!!! I hope you have a very Merry Christmas Margo!!!
That is a great story of courage, love, humility and great bravery! Our guardian angels seem to sometimes step in at just the right moment.
The memories of long ago Christmas celebrations mesh with my own during The Great Depression in the South.
Christy, I just recently signed onto your list and feel as if I had discovered an aurhentic gold mine! Love your great Southern Recipes! Thank you!
Merry Christmas from Spain.
Merry Christmas Carmen!!!
Thank you, Christy, for your touching story. today many young and even Millennials have any idea of past times and what people live without. Funny thing is we didn’t know we were without. I remember our Christmas this was back in the late thirties and forties. We did not have Christmas. We had no money so we have no Christmas but we children would save our money during the year any nickel or Penny or dime that we could buy a gift for our parents. I remember one year I bought my mama a set of salt and pepper shakers which to me were the most beautiful things ever although they cost nothing much. We also had a wood stove which only warmed one room so we did not get warm until we got out of bed and stood next to it thank you so much and a very Merry Christmas to you your family and all of your readers.
Merry Christmas to you and yours Jan!!!
Thank you so much. Your story relays the true meaning of Christmas. There’s an old quote that we pass on every year at this time: Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas, if you stop opening presents and listen. I was blessed to always have something to open Christmas morning, but after all these years there’s not many items I can recount. I can, however, tell you numerous memories of family and friends during this season. Some of them absolutely joyous, like the addition of a family member with a baby’s birth; some of them bittersweet, like the last Holiday with my Father – as he was dying of cancer and I was preparing to be a new bride. There is a story we relate at this time of year, about the Seven Wonders of the world. To make a long story short, a teacher asks what are the Seven Wonders of the World, and a classroom debate ensues. One school girl says to her classmates that the & wonders are: To See, To Hear, To Touch, To Taste, To Feel, To Laugh and To Love. This is perhaps a different way of looking at Christmas. There’s no trees or holly or snow, no Santa or reindeer or sleighs. But this is something we all should be mindful of yearlong though, and especially at this time of year. Thank You, Christy, for sharing yourself with all of us yearlong. I wish you all a Holiday Season full of the enjoyment of the true wonders of the world, with the people you hold dear. Merry Christmas, and a Happy, Healthy New Year.
Thank you for sharing your story Dawn. Blessings to you and your family. My husband was in his last stages of Alzheimer’s Disease and his third bout of cancer when he passed away (5-yrs ago last August). We were able to keep him home with us through the help of the Hospice Program. Please know, that it helps to share our stories. We are not alone. Thank you again Christy. Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.
Merry Christmas to you Kathleen!!!!
Wonderfully said Dawn!! Amen and Amen!!! Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!!!
Thank You Christy I can remember as a Child my Grandma would make sugar cookies for us and maybe we would get a little brown paper bag that had a orange apple and a few pieces of hard candy. As a child I was so excited and I could hardly wait to get my gift. Times were hard then but good memories.
Good memories indeed Betty!!! I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!!!!