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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Thank you so much for the touching story. I wish that children now knew of the hardships our great grandparents, and grandparents went thru, especially during a holiday like Christmas. You mostly got what you needed, not what you wanted, shoes, shirts, pants, socks, and dresses, or underware. If you got anything that you wanted it was home made….most times. And 9 out of 10 times it was a piece of candy, or cookies or even cakes. Those are great memories to have, in such a drab time of life.
Again, I wish children now, knew just how grand they have life, at holidays.
They would definitely look at things very differently wouldn’t they?!
Sweet and meaningful story. Thanks for sharing this.
What a wonderful story of love, sacrifice, hardship and joy. Thank you for sharing it. A very Merry Christmas and a Blessed and Happy New Year to you. May we all be thrilled with the simple joys of Christmas.
A very Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year to you Claudia!!!
I too grew up on a farm and my dad was a share cropper. We were poor. There were 8 of us children and mom and dad. We didn’t have much as far as toys for Christmas but we didn’t miss it because we were not use to getting all those things. We always had plenty of food with chickens, cows to milk, gardens, and my brothers were hunters. So with deer, rabbit, squirrels, chicken and fishing, we had meat. Dad and the boys would kill a hog but we usually didn’t have beef. We were blessed. We didn’t have the best of everything for sure. I remember my mom making our underware out of flour sacks. When she made us a dress she never used a pattern..we were so proud of our home made clothes… I love your recipes and love to read all your little sayings and hearing about your family and your little girl…Merry Christmas!
THank you for sharing your memories Ruth!!! I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!!
It is my great pleasure to read what you write. Life can be hard but a joyful and lite heart can make it wonderful. God’s blessings on you and yours. Merry Christmas and a healthy, Happy New Year. From a Southern transplant, to Oregon.
Thank you Carol! A very Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year to you !!!
Christy, my face is wet I too know what it means to have a little but have a lot. My uncle was a good man. He would gather the men to help with the butchering and my dear aunt would fill dishpans full so their family could have meat and they would salt it down.Some of sharecroppers was not treated fairly by the owners of these farms. my grand-daddy would tells about hard times was glad to be able to help others. Yes it was cold and a pot-belly stove in the parlor.Thanks for sharing your story/God bless you and your family as celebrate the birth of our LORD. Love Liz
Blessings to you Liz!!!
I’m now 71 years old. My parents we also Alabama Sharecroppers so this story touches my soul !! It also reminds me of two books I’ve read: The ” Painted House” by John Grisham and ” All Over But the Shoutin ‘ by Rick Bragg. Thank you for this post Christy…it brought back vivid memories of a different time in our lives when our parents and grandparents did unbelievable things to survive !
Oh my goodness, I loved the book “All Over But the Shoutin”. It made me think of my great-grandmother Lela. I will have to pick up a copy of the “Painted House”, I haven’t read that one yet, thank you for letting me know about it!!