Christmas Tales of Alabama
Read Christmas Tales of Alabama Online
Authors: Kelly Kazek
Published by The History Press
Charleston, SC 29403
Copyright © 2011 by Kelly Kazek
All rights reserved
Illustrations by Karleigh Hambrick unless otherwise noted
.
First published 2011
e-book edition 2013
Manufactured in the United States
ISBN 978.1.62584.200.8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kazek, Kelly.
Christmas tales of Alabama / Kelly Kazek.
p. cm.
print edition ISBN 978-1-60949-155-0
1. Christmas--Alabama--History--Anecdotes. 2. Alabama--Social life and customs--Anecdotes. I. Title.
GT4986.A53K39 2011
394.266309761--dc23
2011039786
Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Thanks to my family for the many happy Christmas memories
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Contents
The Christmas Song Too Sad for Judy Garland
Helen Keller's First True Christmas
The Gift That Changed the World's Literary Landscape
Truman Capote's Southern Christmas
The Story of the “Alabama Baby”
Girl, Going Blind, Thanks Governor for Keeping Family Together
Fannie Flagg's Magical Birmingham
Pearsons Made Sure Others Had Christmas
Glenn Miller's Legacy Continues in Alabama
Prancer, the Southern Reindeer
When Mountain Man Walt Cagle Came to Town
May Yor Days Be Merry and White
“Merry Christmas” More Than a Greeting For Specially Named Kids
The Holiday Card to the “Silly Looking, Long-Legged Dog”
Reverend's Survival of Bombing Deemed Christmas Miracle
Christmas Paroles Showed “Faith in Human Nature”
The Girl Who Saw Another Sunrise
The Horse That Loved Christmas
The Country's First Mardi Gras
The New Year's Game That Changed History
Preface
On Christmas Eve 2010, I was driving toward home with my daughter when snow began to fall. We had been to visit my grandmother in North Carolina, but we wanted to be home on Christmas morning. We arrived home late, just as the snowfall became heavy. It was rare to see snow at Christmastime in Alabamaârare to see it at all, in fact, but more common in January and February than in December.
We awoke to find snow on the ground and let our beagle, Lucy, outside to romp in the unfamiliar white powder. Its rarity made it seem even more magical.
Across Alabama, it was a Christmas to remember.
Christmas has always been a magical time for my family; although now that my parents are gone, it is often a wistful one. Now the magic of the holidays lies in remembering childhood Christmases with family and the traditions we shared. As did my mother, I always have a real Christmas tree. The smell and feeling of having a twinkling pine near the fireplace in the living room are part of the holiday's magic. Even when my daughter was past the age of believing, Santa Claus would leave a few unwrapped gifts beneath the tree for her to find when she awoke.
When I was a child, I would sleep in my big brother's bed on Christmas Eve so that he wouldn't beat me to the gifts in the morning. We'd awake as early as 4:00 a.m. and run into the living room, eyes wide in wonder, to see what Santa had left. Then we'd have lunch and gifts with maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and dinner with the paternal side. At Grandmother Caldwell's house, cousins were in plentiful supply and so was the food: sweet potato casserole, turkey, ham, creamed corn, dressing, mashed potatoes, potato salad, gravy, deviled eggs, butter beans, green beans, cabbage, collard greens, tomatoes, biscuits and cornbread. There were so many food-laden dishes that my uncle made a metal tray to fit over the kitchen sink so we'd have more counter space for serving. I remember Grandmother always made a separate dish of sweet potato casserole with toasted marshmallows especially for me because I didn't eat the one with the nut topping.
We kids would be squeezed around the table in the homey kitchen, while the adults sat in the dining room. The desserts would line the buffet in the dining room: pecan, pumpkin, apple, sweet potato, egg custard and chocolate pies, fried peach pies, Lane cake, coconut cake, pound cake and, from time to time, a trifle, but we alwaysâalwaysâhad Grandmother's famed lemon cake.
In the South, Christmas traditions run deep. Historians have written that southerners were among the first to celebrate Christmas, and before the Civil War, many northern states felt that celebrating Christmas was a sin. They even enacted laws against it.
A 1903
New York Times
article recounting the memories of Marsylla Keith, a Montgomery woman who lived to be 116 years old and died on April 29, 1904, tells that her family began walking from their home in South Carolina at Christmastime in 1812 and arrived in the untamed land of the Alabama Territory in February. Marsylla was 15 years old when she married her sweetheart the next Christmas. She recounted that the young men at the time would celebrate by shooting off guns “under the houses” and then come to one central home where the young women had made whiskey stew and eggnog. When Granny Keith died, she'd seen more than a century of Christmases and had eighteen children, forty-four grandchildren, twenty great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren.
Throughout the nineteenth century, people would celebrate by firing their guns, shooting fireworks and sometimes throwing fireballsâgasoline-soaked wads of ragsâor “shooting” anvils, which involved placing anvils atop one another with gunpowder inside that would blow the top anvil far into the air.
It's possible that the popularity of such celebrations in the South led to the legend that the State of Alabama was the first to legally recognize Christmas as a holiday. Dozens of published histories state that Alabama made Christmas a holiday in 1836, followed by Louisiana and Arkansas in 1838, although no Alabama historians have unearthed any documents from the state legislature or courts to show that official action was taken to make Christmas a legal holiday.
Whether Alabama was the first to make Christmas official, it is rich in Christmas history and tradition. When I decided to write this book, I wanted to include historical tales of Christmas, as well as some of the more heartfelt and emotional stories I've come across in my twenty-five-year career as a journalist in Alabama. All the tales included within are true ones.
Many were recorded in newspapers of the day; others originated with decades-old newspaper accounts I came across and was determined to discover “the rest of the story.” Wherever possible, I obtained information directly from family members or those involved in the stories. Journalism-style, sources are attributed within each story rather than in a source list in the back of the book.
The tales that follow are in no chronological order but were placed in a rather haphazard fashion to balance historical accounts, from the Eggnog Riot, the history of white Christmases and prison paroles to the origins of songs such as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Angels among Us.” Then there are stories that will tug at your heart, such as that of the little girl burned in a fireworks explosion and the child who was going blind. Some are just fun tales, like best-selling author Fannie Flagg's memories of Birmingham at Christmas, the tale of the holiday card sent to the home of the “silly looking, long-legged dog” and the life of Fred the Town Dog.
I hope you enjoy reading this eclectic little mix of tales as much as I enjoyed tracking them down and writing them.
Merry Christmas!
Acknowledgements
In addition to those listed within each story, those who provided assistance include Kelly Owen, Joy O'Neal of Spirit of Hope Youth Ranch, Larry Holder, Fran Burgess of the Boaz Library, Jamie Moncus, Sheryl Christmas, Helen Selsdon with the American Foundation for the Blind, Lisa Warr and Dr. Robert B. Kane of Maxwell Air Force Base, Retired General Charles Cleveland, Tim Hollis, Martha Fowler, Pat Renta, Lorraine Umphrey, Kenneth Shaw, Jonni Hartman Rogers, Ann Kyle Holman and Lynn Brown, Ruby Shuttlesworth Bester, Kitty Murray, the Museum of Mobile and Greg Ray. Tracey Kry with the American Antiquarian Society gave permission to quote Anne Sullivan's letters in the section on Helen Keller (Sullivan, Annie, Letters, 1887â1902, Mss. Misc. Boxes S, American Antiquarian Society).
I also relied on the online Encyclopedia of Alabama, a valuable resource for researchers.
Special thanks to my old friend Beth Smith for her input on the manuscript. As always, I want to thank my family, especially Shannon, for supporting me in my writing.
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Christmas
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By age thirty, Hugh Martin was accustomed to working with unpredictable movie stars. He'd just never butted heads with Judy Garland. One day in 1944 on the set of
Meet Me in St. Louis
, Judy, who was supposed to sing a Christmas song to seven-year-old cast mate Margaret O'Brien, complained to director Vincente Minelliâwho would soon become Judy's husbandâ“If I sing that song to that sweet little Margaret O'Brien, they'll think I'm a monster!”
