Christmas Traditions in Appalachia

it's almost christmas time this is my favorite time of the year i'm lucky to say that because i have such pleasant memories about christmas i know a lot of people maybe don't or people don't have as a close-knit family as i do but i'm thankful for that and it seems like the holidays christmas especially is just the time to enjoy those family ties that run strong and lots of appalachian families that's kind of the close-knit family is kind of one of those appalachian things that's common like i said not everyone and i sure feel sorry for the people that didn't have it but for most families in appalachia christmas is a joyous time of the year of course there's their faith they have that a lot of you know where appalachia mostly is in the bible belt a good portion of it so there's a lot of believers certainly that's the reason for me and for my family but uh but it no matter it's just a joyous time of the year for people and there's around that over the years there's been so many traditions of course things are different today than they were in days gone by but a lot of those same traditions are passed down through families and people still observe them and still do them of course one that comes to mind is pretty much universal not just in appalachia but it's food you know people associate certain foods with christmas and they look forward to to the things the bacon and the pies and the cooking and the you know whether it's a ham or a deer roast or whatever it is in my family uh the tradition my husband matt he does and it was passed down from his grandfather james and i'm not sure you know i wish i could we both wish we could go back and ask james well was did they do that in your family too anyway but it is on christmas eve they have we uh fix a pot matt fixes it of oyster stew and that's what his grandpa always did and that's what his dad papa tony that's what he does and then now that's what we do you know it seems odd i think well oysters in appalachia but and i thought it was just relegated to his family but after i become you know more interested in the actual research of appalachia of history and culture of appalachia and started the blind pig in the acorn i came across several entries from different people several documentation in books and dictionaries and things that that was a pretty fairly common common enough to be documented anyway that people did eat oyster stew on christmas eve so i was really surprised by that but that's one of our traditions a lot of people you'll hear them talk about making an orange slice cake if you've never ate that that's really good it's like the orange candy the little sugar covered candies those are that's a really good cake i make pralines every christmas so that's one thing that we look forward to is the pralinks there's fudge matt's uncle charles he used to make fudge he's passed away now but his fudge i looked uh forward to it every christmas when i would go to matt saint wanda's house and and eat there and it's funny he give me the recipe for it and i could never make it like charles could it never tasted the same as he did i had some others wrote down i was trying to see if i could figure out if i mentioned them all oh sugar cookies that was the other one so when i was growing up granny always made sugar cookies that was the only time of the year and i don't know where she got her recipe but it's my favorite sugar cookie recipe because it's got orange rind in it and that orange that little flavor of orange just really makes the cookie special but anyway she would cut them out you know with cookie cutters christmas santa claus and christmas trees and stars and all that and then we would decorate them with colored sugar well at some point i'm sure as kids we made a big mess and all that at some point she'd give up on them and she let me and paul take over so there's some funny pictures along the way of my brother paul and i my younger brother steve was he always seemed like an adult he probably wasn't interested in making cookies but paul and i would make them and that was a lot of fun and then once i was married i couldn't wait to start the tradition with my family so every christmas cory and katie and i make them and when they were little i've got pictures of them making them uh over the years being silly like me and paul were more of teenage years but also when they were real little making a complete mess every year i'd wonder why do i do this but i'd forget it by the next christmas and we'd we'd make the huge mess again with colored sugar everywhere and flour and letting them try to roll out the cookies and and cut them out it was always an ordeal i remember one year corey told me that made her so happy she said mama when i grow up i want to be a cooker that's what she called it was a cooker anyway so that's one of the food traditions that we have but and that's common throughout everywhere like i said universal not just by no means in appalachia but there's other traditions that are uh maybe common in other places too but i can only speak to appalachia but one of them is gathering greenery so a lot of people you'll know they'll they'll go out and shoot mistletoe which is a um it's almost a parasitic plant actually but it has little berries and it grows in the tops of trees and and the best way to get it out a lot of times is to shoot it out so because you can't climb that high in a tree you know you know it's in danger so people gather mistletoe they'll gather holly so holly with red berries in appalachia is called she-holly the holly because there's a male and a female of the tree the one without berries is called he-holly so that's the interesting thing but people will gather that and they'll gather just greenery from uh pine trees even just white pines even but any kind of pine and also like creeping things that grow along the ground i think of there's a creeping cedar it's called there's galax and there's moss even and days gone by not so much today at all i don't think if i'm wrong tell me if you know more about it than i do but people actually gathered those things to sell so they would gather on people that lived in appalachia and they would sell those to florist and to different people that needed them to make arrangements or to sell to other people for their christmas decorations and and it was like a way to make spending money make extra christmas money or extra money for whatever you needed you know not just for christmas but around the holidays and uh one time i'd wrote about gay lackings because that was kind of a real industry where people um would go out and get and collect galax leaves they're like if you've never seen them they're about this big and they're like the shiny green almost don't even look real but leaves and they grow wild throughout the appalachian mountains but one of my blind pick readers left this comment at ammons so we never knew about galactic and he said but we did gather moss and boxwood cuttings to sell to florist way back in the woods in deep dark damp haulers where the sun never shines the thick moss on big rocks can be peeled off like taking covers off a bed i've seen pieces as big as four to feet uh four to five feet square we would roll them up and put them in a toe sack boxwood is a domestic plant so we found it around homes and old house sites one year in november we waited across the little tennessee above louder milk to get to an old homestead i wasn't being careful about where i was putting my feet and stepped into a hole that put me completely under i got out shook off and kept going coming back across we had to put our toe sacs on our heads to keep them dry but we made it unscathed so that was ed telling about the days when he actually went out and gathered the stuff to sell i've never gathered it to sell but i have gathered it to decorate my home with i love moss i've always loved moss since i was a little girl and i would line my playhouse at granny and pabst with moss so that it was like i had carpet and greeting pap's house didn't have carpet in it and when i was young and somewhat silly uh you know when you go through those things i was kind of embarrassed that granny pap didn't have carpet because that was all the rage and all the style now today people don't necessarily want carpet because they find it's easier to keep bare floors clean like what granny and pat pad anyway but i've gathered moss before and made christmas decorations with it kind of like a little snow globe i put the moss in the inside and then put little figures or anything or little branches are in there and a mason jar makes the best easiest it's so easy you go out and get your little moth and put it in the lid of the mason jar and then put the mason jar on there put your little decorations and then there you have like a snow globe and you can if you don't use um any kind of paint or anything in it some people paint granny used to make those sometimes and she would actually paint on the jar but if you don't do that then you can just unscrew it and undo it all and still use your mason jar for cannon or for whatever you need to john paris he noted that it was that was such a common thing for people to go out and and gather greenery for christmas that he wrote this little piece uh december in the hills and this is just one little quote from it but december is laughter in full hearts and the glad hub hub of company coming it's mountain women gathering pine cones and galax and holly and weaving them into many splendored things to garland christmas mantles so he that was uh something that he wrote about it it was just one little piece of it but speaking of pine cones that's another thing you decorate with pine cones um pap told me a great story about it he said when he was growing up over in pine log that's like across the mountain from where i live it's like another community kind of next to brass town i guess you would say anyway there was a gentleman that had a tree and it wasn't a native tree at all to appalachia it was somehow i don't know if he had uh planted it or maybe someone before him planted it they got it from somewhere else and i don't know what kind of pine it was but it was the kind that has the great old big pine cones you know the really big ones but everyone knew the man had it and and he loved to share those pine cones with people and again at christmas you know people is when people would want them to decorate with so one sunday at church he announced the pine cones you know are ready and anybody that wants some can come by and pick up a few but please don't be greedy please leave enough for the whole community to have so perhaps said about a couple of days went by and he decided he'd go down there he'd walk to the man's house and he'd get one or two for his grandmother and his mother so they could decorate for christmas well pep said he got there and they were gone there was not one pine cone left and he thought well you know i guess somebody was greedy but you know what you gonna do about it so he just went on his way but he said as the days continue to pass that week you know another day or two they begin to hear other rumblings in the community can you believe that somebody stole all the pine cones one person went down there and got them all and they were all kind of upset about it but come sunday the next sunday at church they all got the best surprise of all so there was a girl about pap's age which i ended up i've known her my whole life or she's known me my whole life she's passed away she passed away in this last year but her name was lenoir and lenoir uh just wanting to be she perhaps said she was always just a a girl that was always happy to help and happy to to be wherever she was at and friendly and outgoing and that's my experience with her as a as a child and as an adult anyway but that she had decided that she would help help everybody so she took her own wagon down to the or her parents wagon down to the man's tree and she gathered ever pine cone not that she was going to keep them for herself but on sunday she brought them all to church so there was the wagon full of pine cones so that everyone could share and they wouldn't have to go to the man's house and plant them or and pick them up that's just the sweetest story makes it sweet to me that makes me cry just because i knew her but uh that's like the spirit of christmas anyway uh sorry about that so that's a great thing uh when i think about decorating my own house and and going out and picking holly that's got the red berries or snipping even if you just snip the edges if you have a live tree if you just snip the bottom branches off and you get to use those that's great but that's one of the traditions too in appalachia it's still gathering those greeneries for christmas to decorate with another one is a funny one is loud noises so a lot of times on christmas eve especially sometimes on christmas night but mostly on christmas eve you'll hear gunshots or firecrackers well i live in a place where there's a lot of guns a lot of people that are gun owners and that enjoy guns and enjoy practice and shooting and all that so i grew up with that kind of thing and never thought anything about other people doing it but turns out that's another thing that's common throughout appalachia so in my dictionary of smokey mountain english they note it and they talk about it but they're not just talking about the firearms like the or firecrackers when i wrote about it before on the blind pig and the acorn a lot of older people noted that in their area of appalachia that firecrackers didn't just go on sale like in july they also went on sale in the months preceding christmas so that people could buy them and have them to shoot off on christmas eve now this is a different time kind of making noise but it was people would go around singing and like with pots and pans and beating on them so it's called a serenade and and people did this during weddings but also at christmas so here's what the smoky mountain dictionary smoky mountain english had to say about it a serenade is a noun serenading if you're serenading that's the verbal noun anyway a similar celebration moving from house to house in the community on christmas eve or other holiday so in the hall collection 1939 in cades cove tennessee serenading men would go from one house to another making lots of noise ringing cowbells and shooting guns that was cora myers in 1960 mason memoir on christmas eve night it was customary for a group of young men to gather up and go serenading we would take along the old cowbells muzzle loading shotguns horns and any other noise making device which was available there were always three or four banjos and fiddles in the crowd we would try to slip up to someone's house without being discovered the serenade would usually begin with a long blast from a trumpet the trumpets were usually made from ram horns then the firing of the shotguns combined with the ringing cowbells added to the commotion if a family were somehow missed by the serenaders they felt as if they'd been slided it it's still common uh to hear to for people to do that in certain areas of appalachia so i know in my own area of appalachia i've never been on a serenade the closest thing to it would be when i was young at church the we the youth choir or whatever you want to call it it was adults too but would go around and we would go to people's house go christmas caroling but we nobody was shooting off any guns or uh ringing cowbells but i when i wrote about this on the blind pig and acorn a few years back i did find out there is a group of people in brass town that do that that do go around they've never come to my house but i guess they you know you'd have to be careful these days whose house you go to to start shooting off guns or or clattering uh cowbells or whatever but there are still people that do it and i've always wanted to i always thought that would be the coolest thing again you'd have to really be careful whose house you went to today you're liable to scare them to death because it's that's kind of falling out of fashion and not many people do it but there's some other christmas folklore that i want to share with you today and it comes from a book dory woman of the mountains that's like my favorite book about appalachia it was written by florence coke bush if you ever get a chance please get it and read it many so she says many legends superstitions came to the mountains with our ancestors one legend says that on christmas eve the animals talk bees in their hives are said to hum the melody of an ancient carol from dust to dawn the old people say they have heard the music of the bees and have seen cows kneel and speak on this holy night the plants will bloom as they did when christ was born although covered with snow underneath the ground is covered with soft green vegetation you can hear an angel sing if you're willing to pay the price if you sit under a pine tree on christmas eve angel voices will sing all around you the price you pay for the miracle is death you won't live to see the sun rise again it's it's not funny but it is funny that so much appalachian folklore is death everything is death so i don't think anybody want to hear the angels sing even though that'd be great but wear something fresh and new on christmas and your luck will be good don't wash clothes on the friday before christmas if you want to stay out of trouble don't let the fire go out on christmas morning our spirits will come and take you away don't give your friends or neighbors a match a warm coal or even a light to be taken out of the house if you do you'll be given away your hope of a good future if you leave a piece of bread on the table after christmas supper you'll have an enough to eat till next christmas that's that one's good so she mentioned old christmas old christmas is not something i grew up observing or even knew about until i started the blind peeking the acorn and then i began to hear people say well on old christmas my family does this or something like that and i thought well what is old christmas so i had to find out so i did a lot of research this actually is not where i researched to begin with but this is from this dictionary smokey mountain english so in 19 or 1895 edson and fairchild tennessee mountains january 6th so see i think she said january 5th that's what she said so i don't know about that but the day is remembered by those who never heard of 12th night or epiphany 1905 miles spirit of mountains but he and ours do not disagree about certain weather signs their mother taught them when they were shirttail boys signs about groundhog day for example and the ruling days the 12 days from the 25th of december to old christmas each of which rules the weather of a month of the coming year 1940 newport plain citizen don't carry ashes out between christmas and old christmas in recent times as old christmas became only a historical curiosity it is sometimes supposed to have been an observance of epiphany but this is quite erroneous 1942 thomas blue ridge there are people who may never have heard of the georgian or julian calendar yet and keep an old christmas as they do on january 6 they cling unwittingly to the julian calendar of 46 bc introduced in this country in the earliest years to them december 25th is new christmas according to the georgian calendar adopted in 1752 they celebrate the two occasions in a very different way the old with prayer and carol singing the new with gaity and feasting so that's interesting anyway you can do more research about old christmas but there is still people you'll hear maybe they have like friends over they do something simple like that and so there are a few people that still observe it and again it's because it's one of those traditions that was passed down in their family they grew up with it being observed in when they were a child so then they've carried it on to till today and are observing it with their family and their children so that's an interesting one frank c brown collection of folklore from north carolina that's a great book and i don't have any of them but the good thing about them is there's a whole series of them north of frank c brown's collection of north carolina folklore so he's got some about ballads some about general folklore some about like games and things like that there's all there's like a whole set of them and you can find a lot of them most all of them online at different libraries that allow you to actually read them online so you're not checking it out or you're not having to pay or rent or anything like that it's just free i guess because the books are so old is probably why but uh i looked in in one of those to see if i could find any other folklore about christmas just because i'm crazy about folklore in appalachia so nothing made of leather during christmas will be durable it is unlucky to carry anything away from the house on christmas morning unless something is brought in first if it snows on christmas day the grass will be green on easter a warm christmas means a cold easter if a rooster crows repeatedly at midnight he is crowing for christmas horses talk on old christmas that one reminds me it's funny when the girls corey when the first time she i guess i don't know what it was on tv maybe america's funniest home videos or something like that and it was like a you know a horse making a funny face and there was a human voice but it's funny she said oh mama i didn't know horses could talk too so it was funny i hate it she was so excited that i hated to say well they really can't honey that's just you know it's just tv but uh water turns to blood at midnight on old christmas and then i discovered there's many different variations about the one about the animals kneeling like in the piece i read from dory at midnight such as on old christmas animals kneel down and face the east on christmas eve at midnight cows kneel and low at midnight on old christmas all horses and cows stand up and then lie down on their other side so those are just some some folklore that i found not that i've ever heard anyone actually say any of those in my life in appalachia so you can see how far how quickly things especially folklore how quickly it fades away there's a great story about animals kneeling on my site if you go to the blind pig and acorn i'll try to link to it below but celia miles wrote it and it's a true story that happened to her when she was young and it's just a really heartwarming christmas story if you if you're interested in reading it i'll leave that link but i hope you enjoyed this talk about traditions of christmas in appalachia and i hope you'll leave a comment and tell me about ones that you know about uh that i didn't mention or maybe tell me if you're familiar with the ones i did mention or if your family gathers greenery or if they want special food they cook for christmas that that you makes you think of the holidays or any other kind of uh traditions you have i did think just thought of one other one that we do and i didn't grow up doing this but it was something i started with the girls is that on christmas morning we usually because you know we're gonna have christmas dinner with granny used to be with granny and pat but now with granny and the rest of the family so there's really no reason to cook a big breakfast because by one o'clock we're gonna be eating you know turkey and deer roast and all that kind of stuff so we usually have muffins of some kind i'll make blueberry muffins or something like that and we put a candle in them and then we sing happy birthday to jesus so that's just a little thing that um i don't remember how i started doing it but we've done it ever since cory and katie was big enough to understand i guess as a way for me to make sure that they understood what the reason for the season really was you know instead of just the presents they just opened but uh but please leave a comment and share your christmas traditions that you do with your family and especially any that you know that come from appalachia you know the ones you've heard about or that you've experienced yourself and please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already it's a great way to help me celebrate appalachia and i really appreciate it but mostly i just hope you'll drop back by often as i celebrate appalachia

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 42,293

Rating: 4.9519291 out of 5

Keywords: Appalachia, Appalachian Mountains, Oyster Stew on Christmas Eve, Orange Slice Cake, Gallackin, Gathering Moss, Appalachian Foodways, Serenading, tradition of shooting guns or fire crackers at Christmas, Old Christmas, Christmas Traditions, Unique Christmas Traditions, Misletoe, Christmas Folklore, He Holly, She Holly, Gathering greenery, Animals kneeling on Christmas, Animals Talking on Christmas, Christmas Traditions in Appalachia, Christmas in the Mountains

Id: gvpEDRsux3I

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020