Christmas in a Sock by Jodi Lea Stewart

1933. December 24, 7:30 p.m. 

If I wanted Doodles to sleep warm as buttered biscuits, I’d have to do some more quilt tucking.

I pressed it in good and tight all along her side and under her chin. There. Now she wouldn’t shiver in her sleep or roll off to the floor. It wouldn’t hurt her any if she did cause our mattress was only four inches of feathers and cloth and it was laid right on the floor on top of an old blanket that had a few moth holes.

Doodles was nine years younger than me and mostly my responsibility. Truth is, I was so glad to get another girl in this family, I didn’t mind doing anything for that skinny little baby. I had two older sisters, but they were already married by the time I got any sense.

I’d been stuck with eight brothers and me the only girl for miles around for so long ... shoot, Doodles was like getting a tiny angel to take care of. Ol' heaven sure waited a long time to give her to me, though, cause I’m thirteen and almost growed up now.

I put my ear on top of the wood floor and tried like crazy to overhear the soft talking going on in the room down below me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make out the words. Something was scooted here and yonder. Something big.

Yep. That’s the right sounds for shore. Same as every year. It meant Mama and Dad were getting things ready for us kids to have Christmas in the morning. My old raccoon grin broke out so big on my face, you couldn’t erase it with a mop!

I yelled straight into my squashy pillow until my eyes watered. I did that sometimes when I was excited and didn’t know what else to do. I got that over with and flipped on my back. I cracked every one of my fingers one at time. I learned how to do that from Calvin—one of my brothers. Most of them boys were good for nothing at all, except learning me how to do things like fistfight and get in trouble. Only thing I was glad about was how Sam taught me how to spit across the room and make it land in a can. Now, that was useful.

Shush now, I told myself. None of that mattered tonight. Not with the magic dust swirling all around me so hard my stomach felt like a Mason jar full of cow cream right before it turns into curdled butter.

Nothing no how could ever be as fun as Christmas at the Woodson house, even if it wasn’t much of any kind of fancy. It had us—this family—in it, didn’t it? That was enough, even if we were as poor as dirt and too dumb to stop laughing about it.

Us kids had to go to bed extra early on the night before Christmas so special things could happen. I didn’t know how Mama and Dad did anything special for us with us having just about no money in the world. I sure loved it when they did, though. Loved it more than running home barefooted the last day of school.

I stared into the dark with my hands folded over each other and whistled for a little while until those sweet banana pies Mom was making after breakfast tomorrow just rassled my mind down to the ground. She never made such a thing as that except on Christmas day. Those pies tasted so dang good, you felt rich as Solomon when you ate them. She made enough for us kids to have two whole slices if we cut them kind of skinny.

After the pies, Mama would stir something else together in her big crockery bowl. Pretty near the best thing anyone ever made—her Christmas Candy Cake! She’d take that pretty thing out of the stove with the marain icing sitting up on it like stiff snow. Shiny patches of melted red, green, and white candies sparkled on the top. Whooee, us kids about lost our eyeballs right out of their sockets just looking at it. Wouldn’t have been surprising at all to see our eyes rolling across that wood floor after Mom whisked her cake over to the griddle to cool down.

Thinking about it now bout made me throw up since I wanted a piece of it so bad. How could I ever fall asleep? Dang near stupid to try. Next thing I knowed about is when one of those no-good brothers threw a pair of overalls on my head. I flung it off madder than a bee with three stingers and couldn’t believe it was light outside. 

Morning? 

I leaped off of that mattress and grabbed Doodles up tight and barreled down those creaky steps two at a time. I ran quick through the kitchen and into the front room and into Mama and Dad's tiny bedroom. Had it happened? The magic?

The glow in my mama’s eyes was as loud as any shouted-out bunch of words. I couldn’t hardly take my eyes off of hers, they were so bright. I put Doodles down and shook my hands in the air just to get my nerves settled down.

Can we? Can we look now? Huh?

Mama counted our heads to see if we were all there. After the last head, her usual serious face broke out in a smile bigger than the whole of Oklahoma. She stepped away from the iron-post bed where her and Dad, and sometimes a few young’uns, slept. I tell you, us kids scampered under that bed like rabbits out running a pack of slobbery hound dogs. When we came back out, we were holding on to one of Dad’s long gray and white winter socks. Those socks looked like they had the mumps, they were so full. 

Doodles laughed right out loud at us holding our fat socks with both hands like someone was gonna steal them away from us. We clawed them open and dumped everything out in our own special spots. Hazelnuts, walnuts, Brazil nuts, and pecans poured out first. Then came an apple and an orange. My mouth went dry to bite into that shiny red apple, so I did and ate it all up. That was all the winter fruit we’d ever get, so us kids always gobbled it up quicker than you could say shut up.

The bottom of our socks sagged with ever kind of hard candy. Oh, the colors and

shapes just made us crazy happy. Some of the candies were square with dimples all in them. Other kinds were round with flat ends and little drawings like Christmas trees and holly painted on them. How someone painted so tiny on so many pieces, I’ll never know. Best of all were the big hunks of folded over ribbon candy. That was our mama’s favorite, too.

I finished eating my orange and was looking for a dishrag to wipe my hands on when my brother Snipe threw an orange peeling at the side of my face. My hands turned into fists, but then something kind of strange took me over and dusted the mad feeling right off me. I just felt like smiling at him instead. I tossed him a piece of my own candy. He shore did look surprised.

After a breakfast of mama’s special red-hot pork sausage, eggs, biscuits, milk gravy, and sorghum, we started in eating our candy. Only time all year we’d get any.

Two of those no-account boys had to help me with all the stacks of breakfast dishes, and that, all by itself, was a Christmas miracle. I almost never got any help with those dadgummed dishes. This morning while we worked, we had a contest to see who could put the most ribbon candy in their mouths.

I don’t know who won cause we sucked and slurped on it with our mouths gaped open and our eyes bugging out just like a dog when you pulled his ears way back. After a while, we busted out laughing and near choked to death on candy juice.

Dad said, “Hey,” at us in a low, gruff voice from the other room. We knew that meant stop right now or get your rear ends whooped, so we hid and did it one more time.

After making her banana pies, Mama got Dad's hammer and put a big peppermint stick and a handful of those ribbon candies inside a flour-sack dishtowel. All us kids gathered around to watch. We made Big Eyes at each other every time she swung that hammer in the air and brought it down to crush the candy for the top of the Christmas Candy Cake.

You know, I can't swear, well, you ain't even supposed to swear, but anyways ... I can't promise if it's true or not, but I got my feelings about it that God Hisself must have gave that Christmas Candy Cake recipe to our Mama.

I mean, why not?

Don't it stand to reason the Almighty would want a special cake like that for His son's birthday? 

– Biddy Woodson, Nowata County, Oklahoma, 1933

~~~~~~

For a complete adventure mystery featuring Biddy, read Blackberry Road published by Sundown Press and Available on Amazon in Audible, Print, and eBook.

Click HERE for Mama's Christmas Cake Recipe, both the Old-fashioned version & the New-fashioned version.

What holiday stories and recipes have been passed down in your family?

I love to hear from you!

Merry Christmas!

BlackberryRoad is published by Sundown Press and is available on Amazon in Audible, Print, and eBook.

“Trouble sneaks in one hot Oklahoma afternoon in 1934 like an oily twister. A beloved neighbor is murdered, and a single piece of evidence sends the sheriff to arrest a Black man that a sharecropper’s daughter, Biddy, knows is innocent. Hauntingly terrifying sounds seeping from the woods lead Biddy into even deeper mysteries and despair, and finally into the shocking truths of that fateful summer.”

 The Accidental Road, Fire Star Press.

"A teen and her mom escaping an abusive husband tumble into the epicenter of crime peddlers invading Arizona and Nevada in the 1950s. Stranded hundreds of miles from their planned destination of Las Vegas, they land in a dusty town full of ghosts and tales, treachery and corruption. Avoiding disaster is tricky, especially as it leads Kat into a fevered quest for things as simple as home and trust. Danger lurks everywhere, leading her to wonder if she and her mother really did take The Accidental Road of life, or if it’s the exact right road to all they ever hoped for."

Jodi Lea Stewart is the author of a contemporary trilogy set in the Navajo Nation featuring a Navajo protagonist, as well as two historical novels, Blackberry Road and The Accidental Road. She is hard at work on her sixth novel set in old New Orleans and St. Louis. She currently resides in Arizona with her husband, her delightful 90+-year-old mother, a crazy Standard poodle named Jazz, two rescue cats, and numerous gigantic, bossy houseplants.

Christmas During the Civil War

I found this post from the Civil War Trust which does a much better job  than I ever could in describing what Christmas meant for those with loved ones serving in the Civil War armies.

Christmas in Camp, Illustration by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly

It can be difficult to relate to the men and women of the Civil War era. Despite the extraordinarily different circumstances in which they found themselves, however, we can connect with our forebears in traditions such as the celebration of Christmas.  By the mid-19^th century, most of today’s familiar Christmas trappings – Christmas carols, gift-giving, and tree decoration – were already in place.  Charles Dickens had published “A Christmas Carol” in 1843 and indeed, the Civil War saw the first introductions to the modern image of a jolly and portly Santa Clause through the drawings of Thomas Nast, a German-speaking immigrant. 

Civil War soldiers in camp and their families at home drew comfort from the same sorts of traditions that characterize Christmas today.  Alfred Bellard of the 5^th New Jersey noted, “In order to make it look much like Christmas as possible, a small tree was stuck up in front of our tent, decked off with hard tack and pork, in lieu of cakes and oranges, etc.”  John Haley, of the 17^th Maine, wrote in his diary on Christmas Eve that, “It is rumored that there are sundry boxes and mysterious parcels over at Stoneman’s Station directed us.  We retire to sleep with feelings akin to those of children expecting Santa Claus.”

In one amusing anecdote, a Confederate prisoner relates how the realities of war intruded in his Christmas celebrations:  “A friend had sent me in a package a bottle of old brandy.  On Christmas morning, I quietly called several comrades up to my bunk to taste the precious fluid of . . . DISAPPOINTMENT!  The bottle had been opened outside, the brady taken and replaced with water . . . and sent in.  I hope the yankee who played that practical joke lived to repent it and was shot before the war ended.”

For many, the holiday was a reminder of the profound melancholy that had settled over the entire nation.  Southern parents warned their children that Santa might not make it through the blockade, and soldiers in bleak winter quarters were reminded, more accurately than ever, of the domestic bliss they had left behind.  Robert Gould Shaw, who would later earn glory as the commander of the 54^th Massachusettes, recorded in his diary, “It is Christmas morning and I hope qa happy and merry one for you all, though it looks so stormy for our poor country, one can hardly be in a merry humor.”  On the Confederate home front, Sallie Brock Putnam of Richmond echoed Shaw’s sentiment: “Never before had so sad a Christmas dawned upon us . . . We had neither the heart nor inclination to make the week merry with joyousness when such a sad calamity hovered over us.”  For the people of Fredericksburg, Virginia, which has been battered only a matter of days before Christmas, or Savannah, Georgia, which General Sherman had presented to President Lincoln as a gift, the holiday season brought the war to their very doorsteps.

 

On the Home Front

Christmas during the Civil war served both as an escape from and a reminder of the awful conflict rending the country in two.  Soldiers looked forward to a day of rest and relative relaxation, but had their moods tempered by the thought of separateion from their loved ones.  At home, families did their best to celebrate the holiday, but wondered when the vacant chair would again be filled.

In spite of the 150 years which separates us from them, I can say from experience on both sides that these feelings seem to be universal for families separated by war, applicable as much now as they were then.

Sean Kevin Gabhann

 

 

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