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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Could you use Steevia or Monkfruit sweetner instead of sugar in the Hot Chocolate Mix?
Yes you sure can!
What a sad but wonderful story. thank you for telling it again. I can just see the love in her baking them and the faces of the children the next morning.
My Mother grew up in Mississippi, she was the daughter of a share cropper, her Mother was a homemaker, as most woman those days. She was born and raised in the country and survived the depression along with her family. She said her Mother would save her ration stamps all year to have baking ingredient for Christmas. Grandmother sold her extra eggs and vegetables to buy things for her children, that is how she paid for the oranges and nuts for stockings at Christmas. My Grandmother saved scraps of cloth and buttons, worn out socks to make dolls for Christmas, my Grandfather used wood scraps and carved toys for his sons. Mother remembered getting a doll one Christmas made out of a corncob. Its dress was made cloth from of outgrown clothing, its face from an old sock, button eyes, the boys got corncob pipes. Those gifts and stocking were the kids gifts. Her Mother cooked for days making pies and cakes and holiday foods as per the southern traditions.
My Grandparents did the best they could with what they had, my mother did the same for us as children. I followed my Grandparents and Mothers example and gave my children as much as I could. My daughter and son are following that same tradition with their children. This is love in its purest form, a gentle unconditional love of a parent for their children. The best of all Southern Traditions, I think. Celebrating Christ Birthday with the blessing of HIS unconditional love.
Merry Christmas and Bless you one all all. . .
What a wonderful and blessed heritage you hail from Lan!! I pray your holiday season is a blessed one!
thank you Christy for sharing the seven cakes again I printed it out the ftrst year that you shared it and I have told a lot of people about the love you great grandmother gave her family.I grew up in a small town here in south Carolina and we didn’t have much money but we had a lot of loe,we had a Belks dept store and on Christmas eve they marked the dolls down to half price they(Mama and Daddy wold take me there earlier and if I saw one I liked my Daddy would walk to town Christmas eve to see if it was still there and if so get it,one year he slipped and fell on ice and hurt his back which I didn’t kow ill many years ater then mama would make some clothes for the doll on a peddale sewing machine.and we had orange apple peans etc in stockings and sometime a half dollar,theyr both in Heaven now but I remember those special Christmas tme,thanks for sharing your family and I hope you and your family have a merry Christmas ,ms Patricia McCurry York,s.c.
Thank you so much Patricia, I hope you and yours have a blessed holiday season!!
Christy, every December I look forward to reading the Seven Cakes story on your blog. It reminds us all of what blessing we have daily.
Amen, we are so blessed Nancy. I pray this coming New Year blesses you abundantly!!
Thank you so much for writing you column I love it and look forward to it please keep up the spectacular work.
Thank you so much Teri!!!
I Absolutely Love the Christmas story and can relate to it. Thank you for sharing it with us. Patricia K.
Thank you Patricia, I appreciate you being here!