Seven Cakes – Though Dirt Poor, They Had Cake For Christmas
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 from Southern Plate, please click here.
Merry Christmas from Southern Plate!
Related posts:
- The Twelve Myths Of Christmas-How to put more jolly in your holly! This time of year brings out the absolute best in...
- Chocolate Velvet Cake With Cream Cheese Icing (And why you are a good Mama if your cake is ugly) I try to teach optimism to my kids. I’ve...
- Chocolate Sundae Cake: Sinfully Good, Sinfully Easy If you enjoy Southern Plate, please help support the site...
- Lane’s Honeybun Cake We have a VERY SPECIAL guest blogger today –...
What a touching tale! Thanks Christy for reminding us what Christmas should be about. And thanks for helping so many of us show our love( the homemade way) for family and friends with your wonderful recipes
i love your website very much!
What a wonderful family story. Thanks for sharing and for all your hard work keeping us all equipped with your great recipes. Have a very Merry Christmas!
I just love that story! I know you’ve told it before, but this was much more detailed. Just wonderful. Merry Christmas!
My mother grew up in North Alabama many years after the Depression ended, but things were much the same for them! I heard the same sort of stories about going to bed with hot bricks and meager Christmases. In fact, that family photo looks almost just like some my parents inherited from their families!
My family weren’t big gift givers. I guess the frugality was too ingrained in them. But food… boy, food was everywhere at Christmas, especially on my father’s side!
Thank you for the cake recipes!
My dad lived in houses with dirt floors and even a cave at one point. It is such a weird concept to us now days. I think it made that generation have more of an incentive to do better.
My mom would tell me stories of what a treat it was when rich relatives visited and brought them soft drinks. Mom won a dollar from a contest and it bought four bags of groceries for the family.
Now lets talk about how it also made them weary of throwing anything away! The hundreds of plastic shopping bags and empty butter tubs that have found sanctuary with my dad is overwhelming.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” That’s what my grandmother (born in 1888) always said. And I can still hear my mother (born in 1910) say, “Don’t throw that away! We can make use of it!”
You can make mud rugs of the plastic bags and store stuff in the butter tubs, don’t you know?
You can throw it all out when he’s not with you anymore; let him have it now, why not?
My Mom would save small pieces of sting because “you never know when you might need one”…
Tina, my mother keeps all the pieces of string from various grocery items! Like some of the white rice is sold in little ’sacks’ which are stitched closed; she will keep that string!
I have the most beautiful crocheted bedspread that my great aunt crocheted using strings from sacks of things like flour, rice, etc. She made it for my dear grandmother when she married my grandfather. It is too fragile and pretty to put on a bed but occasionally to “show it off” I will put it on my formal dining room table.
What a beautiful story! It helps puts the true meaning of Christmas into perspective. Thanks for the recipes as well.
What a sweet, sweet story! And thanks for sharing your cake recipes too!
I love that you know your family history so well – so many folks these days don’t. Your story reminded me of something I used to do when I was a young girl, something that I hadn’t thought about in years! Back then we only had those tall gas wall heaters in all the rooms, which pretty much didn’t do a lot to keep a room warm and only kept you warm if you were actually standing and leaning up against them! But, in our family room there was a bookshelf that sat over the top of a fake log gas fireplace. The books in that shelf used to get pretty warm so I’d snatch up a big stack of those books and stick them in my bed to warm my bed up before bedtime. Then I’d take them out from the covers and climb in. Every winter morning you could count on finding a huge stack of encyclopedias piled up next to my bed. I’ll bet my parents thought I was one smart cookie LOL!!!
Beautiful, just beautiful.
Thank you.
Steph Oh Steph, thank you all so much for making me feel like I am doing something useful. Every day I am working on Southern Plate is a good day because of all of you. I get the sweetest emails and comments and I cannot tell you how much your kindness means to me!
Laura Thank you so much!!!! I truly love you all.
Stephanie Thank you!! I hope y’all are settled in from your move and ready for Christmas. I’m looking forward to seeing that gorgeous baby in Christmas morning pics on your blog!
Sonya You know, that was the thing, no one really felt all THAT poor because it seemed everyone was poor. I think they were happy all in all, but certainly wouldn’t have minded an easier life!!
The food…boy do Southerners do food at Christmas or what? I think that is especially true now, we’ve come from these generations of people who had to do without and they’ve always felt the big feast was such a special event for that very reason. Its what we have been taught. I hope folks will always remember why it is so special though, and that there were those of us, just a generation or two back, who actually went hungry.
Bill Empty butter tubs!!!! Sour cream containers!! Glass pickle jars!! That’s the FANCY food keepers!! I had to smile at that. Even now, go to my grandmother’s fridge and that’s what you’ll find. Open her cabinets and there will be a little stack of them, sitting neatly atop a little stack of lids. I know exactly what you are saying.
Grandmama used to save coins she got from selling scrap iron. She’d keep it hidden. One day, her brother Albert, found her stash and went to the store and bought a sack of candy. He then came back and shared it generously with all of the kids. They were thrilled, especially my Grandmother – until she found out where he had gotten the money. She said “I just a cried and cried after that!”
Mary LOL What a GREAT story!! I have to call mama and tell her that one!! I’ve been very fortunate to have had a lot of grandparents in my time and a few still with me, so I’ve always been eager to listen in when one of them starts talking about the good old days. Its knowing where you’ve been that helps you appreciate how far you’ve come.
Thank you!!!!
Mike Thank you so very much. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, Mike!
Gratefully,
Christy
I love this story. It touched me so much. Thank you for sharing and reminding us all that it’s not all about what you get, but about loving each other and being with family.
Thank you for sharing you famiy history with us. It also reminded me of my Great-Grandmother. She rests in God’ arms now, but I do remember her Fresh Apple Cake. I have never tasted anything like since she pasted. My Mamaw could save more from nothing. I mess her so much. Have a blessed Christmas.
This has reminded me of another food-related Christmas custom from another era- getting fruit in your stocking! When my mother was a child, Christmas was about the only time of year that you got fruit, especially oranges! Even though now we can get fruit year ’round, she still puts apples and oranges in my husband’s and my stocking. It was sort of a throw away item to me as a kid, but now that I’m older and more health conscious, I don’t mind it! One year, my husband asked why she did it and I just laughed and said, “To her, that’s just what you do at Christmas!” Last year, I was talking to her. She sounded frazzled and said that she hadn’t had a chance to get to the grocery store to get the fruit for the stockings and would I mind? I assured her it would be fine!
What a great story! It’s nice to meet you too! I love southern cuisine and enjoyed looking at your site. Natasha
Christy,
Thanks so much for sharing your family history with us. My father grew up in Walker County poor as poor could be, in a shack that you could see the dirt through. His father died, and it was him and his sis and brother and mother, many a day he spent in the fields working from sunrise to sundown just for some cornbread and beans if they were lucky. He used to tell me all about how hard they had it growing up, but the love that his mother gave them in what she had to make due with, will forever fill my heart. Dad grew up fast, leaving home at 13 and making his way up north to make money, just to send home, then when he grew to be an adult, he never forgot his younger years. He definately made up for it with us. We had all we needed, and plenty more of what we wanted. But, he never forgot how to spread the love to everyone of us.
I wish you and your family a very special Christmas, and New Year. I have enjoyed your blog/site for a while now, and it brings a smile to my face when I read it. So many things I can relate to when you share with us. Keep up the great work, and Bless you!
What a wonderful, heartwarming story. I can see those children’s faces as they encounter their annual cake-riches.
Thanks for sharing!
What a wonderful story! I was just thinking about what presents I had left to buy and hoping that I get to buy the kids and grandkids everything they wished for. This really hit home. Thanks for sharing this story with us! Merry Christmas to you and your family.
This is a great story, I wish I knew stories of my family history in such detail. My mother told me about bein a child and her house being so cold that they would sleep under so many blankets that you could hardly move and if you moved an inch it was freezing…so you just didn’t move and I am sure it was hard to with multiple kids all sleeping in one bed anyway!! She also told me about cakes being baked and kept in the bedroom where it was cold and she said they would get a big bag of apples and oranges at Christmas and they kept them in the bedroom also!
My mother also didn’t have indoor plumbing until she was a teenager, I think that is the convenience I would miss most if I could go back and visit those times.
I do wish that children and adults appreciated the little things in life more these days, like a cake or a friend stopping by to visit. I am only 30 but I remember that when I was little my Mama and Mawmaw and me would go visit friends or they would come visit with us probably several times a month on the weekend, and now if someone stops by unannounced it seems to be a bother. I miss those good old days!
Does my heart good… hugs to you for sharing such a gem!
Have a blessed New Year!!!
hey christie love your site made your chicken stew the other day FABULOUS!!!!!!!!
I remmber this from last year but I enjoyed all over again just as much. I grew up in the late forties and early fifties and our big treat on Chritmas eve was toll house cookies and a bottle of soda or “pop” as we called it. It was the only time of year that we got toll house cookies and the pop was usually also a treat on Fourth of July. My grown sons simply can’t believe this as they grew up in an era where pop was in the fridge nearly all the time and a chocolate chip cookie was no different than any other. To this day I have a love affair with foods and have never forgotten to be grateful. Those two Christmas treats were as much a part of Christmas as the gifts that Santa brought and those memories are still a treasure to me.
Christy
I am just loving your emails with the neat little kid friendly recipes & ideas!!! The pics are a godsend. Your kids are so cute, they make me smile. i can see my granddaughters enjoying the activities. We are making the snowman soup tonight with their great grandma.
Rhonda
Christy, Thank you for sharing another family story with us. My Mom was a child of the Depression and would always share many tales with us. As a young girl she was always so excited to receive an orange in her stocking at Christmas! A treat indeed! We take our many blessings for granted.
Bountiful Blessings!
What a lovely story (wiping tear from eye). Thank you!
My husband always puts nuts and fruit in our stockings, just like when he was a kid in north Florida, just like when I was a kid in west Texas. Few things are sweeter than a Christmas orange. I hope our kids put fruit and nuts in their kids’ stockings someday!
Dear Christy, Thanks so much for the precious glimpse into your family’s heritage. And thank you for the Christmas gift, which I have already saved into my documents. Oh, that we could give back to you as you have given to us. I’ll just pray that you and your entire family will be richly blessed by the good Lord who loves us all! Merry Christmas, Christy! Mary
Yeah, you got the comments working! And I love your story, that is so sweet. My family were sharecroppers too, and I have many old photos.
A favorite memory I have of Christmas (there are several for me) was when I was quite young a friend my grandfather would come to our house in a great big fancy car. He was a man of few words, portly with a cigar clamped firmly in his mouth and twinkly eyes. Otis would ask us older kids to come out and help him and he would open that trunk. Whole wheels of cheese, a ham, fancy crackers and mustards, ribbon candy and saltwater taffy-all sort of goodies had to be carted into the house.
Now, my parents were young with four kids and had moved to the city to make a new life. We didn’t have much and it seemed like he brought a whole store right in to our kitchen!
I was convinced for many years that Otis was actually Santa Clause and we all tried to outdo each other with being good and polite so we would get ‘checks’ next to our names on the great list he must carry around…
When I was in college, I asked my mom why Otis did this. It seems that my grandfather lent him money to help start his business after college. That would have been just at the beginning of the Great Depression. Otis invested in real estate with that money and went on the become quite wealthy through the years. He always owed a debt of gratitude to my grandfather and I think he repaid it every year at Christmas by being my Santa Clause…
How awesome is this. Thank you for sharing this with us all. I sometimes wish we could go back to days of all it takes to make us happy is a homemade meal and a special cake!
Thank you for sharing your story. It was touching. I have made a big effort this year to teach my 6 and 4 year old, Christmas is not all about toys. We all need to look back at our past generations and realize just how blessed we truly are.
Bless you, Christy, for sharing your stories with us. I first found this site to be a Godsend for the recipes and the glimpses of home. Now, it’s also a place I can go and read heartfelt stories and remember what strong stock we southern women come from. Sure makes the little day-to-day worries seem insignificant.
Christy, thank you so much for sharing a piece of your family’s history with us. It truly does show the true value of Christmas that we tend to take granted. God Bless you & your wonderful family!
Christy,
After reading this I’ve got to go fix my eye makeup =)
Made me think of my momma and some of the stories I have heard her tell about growing up. Thank you for your stories…and of course all the great recipes.
Seven precious cakes, wouldn’t you love to go back in time and be a fly on the wall on that Christmas morning and experience the wonder of it all? Beautiful story, beautifully told.
Thank you for sharing that with us, I really needed it today. Merry Christmas-
Margie
Good thing I’m typing b/c there is no way I could speak with this big ol’ lump in my throat. Beautiful story! I am going to read this to my kids tonight.
Christy,
Thanks so much for this sweet story. My Dad was raised in Fayette County very poor and has shared many similiar stories. Family memories make life richer! Thanks so much for your wonderful website and delicious recipes. The stories you share are very nice. Hope you and your family have a wonderful, Christ-filled Christmas and a healthy, happy New Year!!!
Vicky Kleppelid
kleppelidv@bellsouth.net
Christy,
You are such a wonderful writer. Your recipes are great but you have a way of writing that touches my heart. I love that you share a part of your life with us, I feel as if I know you personally. I love hearing my Mother tell these similar stories. I have lost both of my Grandmothers and Grandfathers and miss them terribly but will never forget all the wonderful stories, like yours, that they shared with us over the years. God Bless you and your family and may you have a wonderful Christmas!
Thank you
Your story reminds me of my husband’s stories from his childhood days in Missouri. Going from farm to farm picking crops to make a living. He never did talk about Christmas as a youngster but he loved to make a Christmas morning for all the kids with lots of presents under our tree. I believe a person just accepts what they have at the moment and nothing more. Children today have expectations but today’s economy sure will change that.
Christy OMG…I love this story…it is so heartfelt and real. I immediately had to forward to my mother and cousin…my mother grew up as did most of my family farming tobacco in NC…such humble beginnings makes for great people. Thanks Christy!
Christy:
Your story reminds of my daddy’s family. They were share croppers too. Daddy told me it was so cold they slept 3-6 to a bed to stay warm. They also used hot bricks to help keep their feet warm. I know that my daddy was always thankful for 1 piece of candy and he thought he was so rich if he got an orange! It makes me so thankful for what I have and the true meaning of Christmas.
I also wanted to let you know how much I enjoy your posts and the recipes – it warms my heart.
Judy Blaise
judithblaise@bellsouth.net
I love to read your stories. They parallel my family history in so many ways. Knowing the family history and how rough it was a few generations back, makes me so grateful for those hard working, thrifty, determined people who paved the way. I remember stories from my grandparents and even my father how there no gifts at Christmas – they were poor. And one time my Dad was thrilled to get an orange for Christmas. It is sad how commercial a holy event has become. Neighborhood kids tell me what they want for Christmas and the toys they ask for are are so very expensive. Oh well…………I didn’t mean to preach. Merry Christmas!
I’d never seen that picture before, how neat! And it’s cool that I could immediately recognize who everyone is.
FYI, I can only submit a comment using IE. In Firefox the name/mail/website fields are not visible.
Well now I need my super smart cousin to tell me what on earth is going on..
We’re so lost, Cindy! Tried for two days not to fix it, its fixed for many folks but some still having probs. ~sighs~
I’m clueless.
well another dose of reality!!! we need to all be happy with all the givings on this great earth…we shouldnt need much…we have a house with a roof on it- heat and indoor plumbing…a pantry stocked with all kinds of foods…love from our family…laughter of the children and adults alike..and good health…what more could one ask for??
thanks Christy- for this and all of your stories…and of course all the wonderful recipes you share with all of us…my family especially thanks you…
have a blessed holiday- and a year with good wishes and good health!
robin wieder
Christy, thanks so much for the story. It helps remind us what is important is our family being together. My dad grew up very poor with a father who would not keep a job. He told me about not having shoes and other kids laughing at him. I think that is why I never remember seeing my dad without his shoes on.
Christy, My mother’s and daddy’s families were also sharecroppers and very poor (did everyone back then make the same pictures?). However, they appreciated so much everything they were given and worked much harder than most people do today for that 25 cents that could be spent on all 5 children for Christmas. Mother talked about when the two older children were already gone from home and she was the one entrusted with the quarter to buy gifts for the other 5 children at home. She could recite who took her to town in a buckboard, how much she paid for each gift and how grateful they were for the combs, little vases, etc. that she could buy for a nickle each. Makes me feel foolish spending so much on our children and grandchildren. Thank you for helping me remember mother and daddy and what’s important.
Thank you Christy- I’ve been a little sad and worried about not being able to buy as many gifts as I wish I could … You’ve reminded me what’s really important and that the people you love and who love you don’t really need expensive gifts. I’ve been baking cookies for everyone and I think that people are genuinely appreciative. I am not sure when it became so important to out-buy each other, but after reading your wonderful story, it all seems rather silly.
I love your site and you constantly make me cry, either from laughter or from the deep feelings you evoke in my heart. Thank you for bringing so much to my life. Linda from Texas
HI CHRISTY,
I REMEMBER MY MOM TALKING ABOUT GROWING UP DIRT POOR, SHE WAS ONE OF FIVE KIDS SHE WOULD TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU COULD LOOK DOWN AT THE FLOOR AND SEE THE CHICKENS UNDERNEATH AND THE SNOW BLOWING THROUGH THE CRACKS IN THE WALLS. BUT THEY ALWAYS I MEAN ALWAYS HAD FOOD TO EAT. THEY NEVER WENT HUNGRY.
MY FOND MEMORIES WERE STAYING AT MY GRANDMAS THEIR HOUSE WAS BIG AND COLD. MY PAW PAW DIDN’T BELIEVE IN HEAT IN THE BEDROOMS AND MY GRANDMA MADE QUILTS AND SHE WOULD PUT THEM ON US AND TUCK US IN WE COULD NOT EVEN MOVE SO MANY QUILTS BUT YOU KNOW WE STAYED WARM. I HAVE ONE OF THOSE QUILTS TODAY. LIKE YOU SAID IF YOU HAD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM YOU BETTER GO BEFORE YOU WERE TUCKED IN. THIS WAS IS IN MISSISSIPPI TOO.
Christy,
Thanks for the wonderful tale of the days of old. It’s interesting to note how similar so many of our ancestors lives were even across great distances. Even in upstate New York back in the late 40’s my father, the oldest of eight on a small farm, remembers Grandma setting the food on the table and the kids having to eat as fast as they could for fear one of the others would eat more than their share and one would go hungry that day while working out in the fields. He even fondly recalls one year when he got a balloon for a Christmas gift and thought it was a splendid gift indeed.
Thank you for a nice reminder of what this season is all about.
Michael
Thank you ,Christie.You are the sweetest thing.
Christy,
Thank you for the lovely story. It is so much like stories my mother told of growing up during the Great Depression, on a cotton farm with six other siblings and dirt poor, too. They moved from Oklahoma to Arizona during that time, and had it even harder. The picture you showed looks like pictures they took and always out in the fields. It was a hard life, but they turned out to be a family of wonderful people, who appreciated life. They worked hard and loved their families, too. I think that is why Tom Brokaw called them the Greatest Generation. Most of them are gone now, and we miss them dearly. Thank you so much for reminding us of the true meaning of this blessed time of year.
Barb
I remembered this story from last year, and I still read it anyway, and I still cried anyway. Thanks!!!
Wonderful story…my mother was from Pelahachee, MS and also was one of 13 children of a sharecropper family!
You know, less really is more. With one or two thoughtful gifts, we are reminded just how blessed we are. Your great-grandmother’s sacrifice and hard work was shown in every morsel of those cakes. It should be the same now…maybe not so downtrodden financially, but for all of us to realize how blessed we are for the little things, not the loud or expensive toys. Thank you for this reminder
I’ve just found your site, lovely story. I miss all the stories like yours, have plenty in my family too along with a few story telling pictures.
Hope you and your family have a safe and Merry Christmas.
I remember reading this post last year and thought it was just beautiful. And it still is.