It’s been said that here in the South, the four seasons are almost summer, summer, still summer and Christmas.
Yes, Christmas means that much to us Southerners! We bake, we throw parties, we give goodies to neighbors and we gather loved ones close. At least we try to.
When I started out as a mother I wanted to give my kids the kind of Christmas I’d had growing up. My parents didn’t have much money but our family sure had a lot of love—and plenty of homemade cakes, candy and every kind of cookie imaginable.
These days, though, everyone’s busy and there’s all that pressure to fill the space under the tree with store-bought gifts. By the time my oldest, my son, Brady, turned two, I was already feeling pulled in so many directions. I wanted that old-time feeling in a hurry-up world.
“What did Lela do at Christmastime?” I asked Grandmamma Lucille one day. If anyone knew about the true heart of Christmas it was Lela, my great-grandmother.
She was a sharecropper during the Depression, a dirt farmer who didn’t even own her own dirt. She raised four children in a shack house so cold during wintertime the kids used heated rocks wrapped in towels to warm their beds at night. Yet Lela was the most grateful, generous and positive person I ever knew. She died at age 89, when I was a teenager, and I still think about her most every day.
“Oh, Christy,” Grandmamma Lucille said, “those were wonderful Christmases. We never had any gifts or anything—we were too poor for that. But Mama wasn’t about to skimp on Christmas. So here’s what she did. Starting every January she’d squirrel away any little bit of baking ingredients she could get her hands on. We never knew, of course. She kept it all secret. A little flour here, a bit of cinnamon there, some raisins, some nuts, anything tasty.
“Then on Christmas Eve she’d tuck us in and go right to the kitchen. She’d get out those ingredients and set to work. She’d stay up all night baking in her little wood stove. Oh, you never smelled anything so heavenly as that kitchen come Christmas morning! We’d jump out of bed and there, lined up on the table, would be seven cakes, each more beautiful than the next. An apple stack cake, a raisin cake, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, peanut butter…. And each day that week, from Christmas to New Year’s, we got to eat a whole cake. Imagine! A whole cake. Why, it was more sweets than we’d have all the rest of the year. And we’d share, too, with whoever happened to stop by. Oh, Christy, those cakes were the best Christmas gift ever for us kids!”
I could picture how their little faces lit up at the sight of those seven cakes, because Grandmamma Lucille’s face lit up the same way now. Well, I’m sure you can imagine what I did. I gathered recipes for some family favorites and got right to work.
My mom and Grandmamma Lucille joined me. Even Brady mixed batter, played with raisins, smeared frosting, licked spoons—just like I did during my own childhood Christmases!
While I baked I told him Lela’s story. He was too young to understand, of course, but I know he felt that special Christmas love every time he licked a batter-covered finger. We baked seven cakes, divided them up, shared them between the three of us and made gifts of sampler plates for friends and neighbors.
Today Brady is 11 and his little sister, Katy Rose, is six. They’ve made seven cakes with me, my mom and Grandmamma Lucille every Christmas since I first heard the story. No matter how busy we get or how much pressure we feel to buy that latest, greatest thing, making Christmas cakes reminds us of what really matters.
We talk about Lela and the wonderful love she had for her family. We plan out which neighbors should get which kind of cake. And we give thanks for our own holiday abundance. Lela baked her cakes because she couldn’t afford anything else.
Nowadays, when we make them, we feel like the most richly blessed family on earth.
Try Green Velvet Cake!
