It's going to be a "hard candy Christmas" here on the farm. It's an old reference to being on such hard times that all you get for gifts is hard candy, fruits, or homemade items. Also- a Dolly Parton song. I must have heard that saying a million times growing up in Eastern Kentucky. People would sigh as they said it, often during particularly difficult years. The Appalachian region of Kentucky has always struggled with financial depression, and it seems no other time is your poorness more on show than at Christmas. Growing up in a middle class family, I personally did not experience one of these such Christmases, but having journeyed into adulthood with a lot of choices that were good for my heart but not so good for my wallet, I'm having my first one this year.
Most gifts will be homemade, thrifted or bought for very little and dinner won't feature a spiral cut ham, oysters, or truffles. But everything under our tree will have been chosen with great care and the food we cook and eat will just be the delicious end to the long relationship we've had with it since we first set tiny seeds in the ground.
Two particular "hard candy Christmas" stories come to mind that I have loved since being a young girl. One comes from the book "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Christmas passages are so vivid and touching and have always been my favorite parts of the entire Little House series.
Laura tells of the great preparations in the tiny cabin,
"Ma was busy all day long, cooking good things for Christmas. She baked salt-rising bread and 'Injun bread,' Swedish crackers, and a huge pan of baked beans, with salt pork and molasses. She baked vinegar pies and dried-apple pies, and filled a big jar with cookies, and she let Laura and Mary lick the cake spoon."
"One morning she boiled molasses and sugar together until they made the thick syrup, and Pa brought in two pans of clean, white snow from the outdoors. Laura and Mary each had a pan, and Pa and Ma showed them how to pour the dark syrup in little streams onto the snow. They made circles, and curlicues, and squiggledy things, and these hardened at once and were candy."
That was the year that Laura was given her doll Charlotte, made by Ma.
In "Little House on the Prairie", Christmas almost doesn't happen. There's bad weather and tough times, but Pa and family friend Mr. Edwards walk all the way to Independence. There they meet "Santa" at the general store and are able to bring back gifts for the Ingalls girls.
"These new tin cups were their very own. Now they each had a cup to drink out of. Laura jumped up and down and shouted and laughed, but Mary stood still and looked with shining eyes at her own tin cup. Then they plunged their hands in to the stockings again. And they pulled out two long, long sticks of candy. It was peppermint candy, striped red and white. They looked and looked at that beautiful candy, and Laura licked her stick, just one lick. But Mary was not so greedy. She didn't take even one lick of her stick."
"Those stockings weren't empty yet. Mary and Laura pulled out two small packages. They unwrapped them, and each found a little heart-shaped cake. Over their delicate brown tops was sprinkled white sugar. The sparkling grains lay like tiny drifts of snow. But that wasn't all...at the bottom of each of their stockings was a bright, shiny, new penny. Mr. Edwards had forged a raging, flooding creek to bring the girls their Christmas, and was rewarded by two of the happiest girls on the prairie."
This year's Christmas will be simple, but it will be so full of joyful memories and thankfulness for the blessings of the year. I have always found it interesting in talking with older people about their happiest of holiday memories- every single time, what they remember most fondly are the Christmases when things are patched together a little more than usual, when things meant more because of the sacrifice or thought involved and the love everything was stitched up with. I am beginning to learn that there's a difference between what you want and what you need. If you're loved, warm and dry, with a full belly and a happy home, you're already richer than many. May you have a very joyful day, no matter what sort of Christmas you may be having.
Each day leading up to Christmas, I will be featuring some of the old-fashioned ways we'll be celebrating so be sure to check back!
