Lassie McCall: In third grade, my teacher, James Keener, had big Christmas programs. We called him “Teacher Jim,” and he had beautiful Christmas celebrations. He would turn us out of a day and we’d all go to the mountains and gather in greenery to decorate with. We got a tree, also. We’d come back, and when that big stove [heated with wood] got hot, that pine would smell so good. Teacher Jim would let us pull up those benches or pews (see, school was in the church) and gather around the heater so we could be warmer. I can remember that still yet. He always had a program with recitations. It was always something pertaining to Christmas and stressed the religious part of it. There might be some humor in there, too, but it was largely religious. He always invited parents in, too, and a good many people would come. That was sort of the highlight of the community.
Everybody took Christmas off. We wouldn’t have to work around the farm. Usually our dad would specially get some wood up ready for good big fires. He would always get what he called a backstick, a big log to put in the fireplace, and it would last about three days. I guess it was called a Yule log in England. Dad just called it a backstick.
—A Foxfire Christmas
Pap told me about houses they lived in when he was a boy that only had a fireplace for cooking and for heat. He said they’d about freeze to death in the winter because the fireplace only kept you warm if you were sitting right on top of it. He said when they got the first woodstove they thought they were living high on the hog because it warmed so much better and even made cooking easier for his mother since she didn’t have to bend over or squat in the floor by the hearth.
Last night’s video: My Favorite Christmas Song Videos from My Family.
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I would have absolutely loved a day in the school with “teacher Jim.” It sounds so much like the days back when I was in grade school in a West Virginia coal camp. We had the three class room type schools where 2 classes were taught in each room. I was so nosy I usually knew all about the class higher up from me just by listening. Dad would tell the story often about asking me once what I learned in school that day. I replied that I “already knew everything.” That,of course, was from eavesdropping on the higher class in the room. No amount of playground equipment can ever be more enjoyable than our recess where we gathered beech nuts and scatterd crunching leaves. We were without water once at school , and the whole school went down to a hand pump in the principal’s yard and drank from the same cup. 🙁 She gave us a gentle “talking to.”
However, my uncles and aunts did have a one room school on Pinnacle Creek with the big pot-bellied stove. Church was in the school on Sundays. My Uncle Larry was paid so much a month by the county school system to go build a fire before school and sweep up floors. It seems it was somewhere around $7.00. They had to walk 2.6 miles to school and were actually paid for that. Everything sure was different back then. He was around 10 years old, and there sure would be some law or rule against that nowadays. He was a very bright ambitious boy, and was my absolute hero always. Dad hated fireplaces, and always remarked how cold their big house was with fireplace heat. Our first stove was called a Warm Morning, and it burned lump coal. That was some hot heat. The stove set out in the floor, and we children chased around it until I stepped on a hot poker one day. Lots of mishaps growing up with a our free spirits and loose reins from Mom. Sometimes the memories are actually what keeps one going.
Beach trees don’t make nuts
Wendell-you can read about beech nuts here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/foraging-beech-nuts/
Lovely. Thank you.
I remember my dad bringing in a backlog for our living room fireplace and some were so big he could barely carry them. Some lasted more than one day. He said they caused the fireplace heat to go out into the room and not so much up the chimney. The dog irons were in front of the back log and pushed up against it. Then the fire was built on the dog irons. My brother and I would hang our pajamas on the screen to warm before taking turns putting on the warm pajamas and racing up the cold stairs to our electric blankets in our bedrooms. Our older sister and 3 older brothers grew up without electricity and slept under many quilts. I remember knitting a wool cap to wear at night. We had a wood heater in the kitchen and kept doors closed to all but the kitchen and parents’ bedroom in the coldest times. Sometimes they would build a fire in their bedroom fireplace which shared chimney with the kitchen. The older kids grew up with a wood cook stove. It was surely different for the older and younger siblings and different for the grandkids. I miss it but wouldn’t want to go back.
I loved todays message because it reminded me so much of the descriptions that my Mother used to talk about. She went to school in a one room schoolhouse in the mountains of Blairsville GA. It later became Pine Top Baptist Church. The church is still up and going strong. Precious memories, shared with me from my Appalachian Mother who kept many good memories in her heart. I’m thankful that she shared them with me.
I enjoyed your video of the family singing Christmas songs very much! The sweet twins were so cute. And the harmonies from Pap and Paul, oh my goodness, so beautiful!
One of my greatest joys as a young boy would be to lay in the floor alongside of my Daddy in front of the fireplace and eat roasted or parched peanuts on those cold winter evenings. We threw the hulls into the fire. We also grew the peanuts, back then we didn’t buy much in a grocery store. I had rather lay in the floor than sit in a chair, but arthritis won’t let me do it now. I guess I learned this from Daddy.
My husband and I really enjoyed your Christmas music video today! I just love Christmas and the song the girls sang Oh Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem that is one of my favorite Christmas songs.
I also love to read all of these stories from your post! It brings back so many memories of my grandparents and of Christmases when I was a child.
I pray every day for granny and your family! So happy for your daughters and their expected babies.
Greetings! Wishing everyone on this site the most wonderful and warm Christmas!
I LOVE that you all have contributed these memories. They are wonderful to share and I thank you.
My earliest memories, ages 3-7, are of living in my uncle’s log cabin in northern Wisconsin. He had a pot-bellied wood stove in a middle room. There was a kitchen with a kerosene cooking stove/oven; a bedroom and a living room. The stove never kept the whole place warm so we stayed mostly in the kitchen. In the winter My mom put a couple of curtains over the doorway to the living room because it was so cold in there. She’d line the space at the bottom of the curtains with a couple of spare sheets because the curtains weren’t long enough. In those days it was nothing if the outdoor temperature got to -20/30 degrees and snow wasn’t even measured. We took it all in stride. I loved the feather bed that my mom and I slept under. I remember one winter we had over 4′ of snow and my mom took a yardstick to measure and it was too short by at least a foot. Mom was worried that the snow would cover up the chimney and she didn’t know how she would get up to the roof to clear it.
Luckily the angels heard her concern and the snow didn’t cover it. That spring there was massive flooding because of the snow depth and unfortunately it also rained heavily. Mom couldn’t plant the garden because it was soaking wet. She was worried what we would do for food because by the time the garden would dry out the season was too short for anything to grow. We were poor and the jobs available to women in those days were very few. Going to the little food market was a luxury. In those days there was not a great deal in the grocery store because everyone raised a garden. I remember there was Campbell’s chicken noodle soup there and some canned vegetables. My grandma gave me a little bowl. There was a red rim on the top inside and a gold medallion at the bottom. Mom would fill the bowl with the noodle soup and make a game of my “finding the gold star” at the bottom. Even though the bowl was small, it took quite awhile to do that because I would eat the noodles one at a time.
Thank you Tipper for allowing me the space to share my memories. I am most appreciative. Many blessing to you and yours.
Catherine Cooper
What a wonderful post today! That was a special teacher to allow those kids to go outside and gather greenery and other things to make their Christmas special while at school (church). Those memories stayed on with them as adults. I always loved a fireplace, the cracking sounds and the smell of the wood as it burned. It was great as long as you stayed in that one room. In my home place, we had a fireplace that was closed up and daddy put in an oil heater. It was still cold in our bedrooms so when we had to get ready for school, mama would lay my socks and other clothes on top of the heater to get warm and then after I had dressed, my brother was next. They were good memories though. Now here at home, gas logs are in the fireplace. Now when we turn on the logs, it’s just not quite the same thing as the wood burning but it is warm.
Tipper. Last night’s Christmas music video was wonderful! I couldn’t pick a favorite. They are all great!! Thank you for sharing. Truly a blessing! Praying for Granny and all of you. Oh, by the way, I went ahead and made the fudge. I used pecans and it turned out delicious. The only problem is, we can’t stay out of it!! Will have to make some more next week. Have a blessed day everyone!!
Although we think sometimes things are not as we wish, we have much to be thankful for today. Counting our blessings is a good thing. Thank you, Tipper, for the heartwarming stories of the past. I also enjoyed your Christmas music video yesterday.
Enjoyed the blog thank you. The house I grew up was old and had fireplaces for heat. It was very cold! One thing though, those houses were poorly insulated — or like our house, had no insulation. I still recall all the furniture in the room scooted up close to the fireplace in winter.
Reminiscing about potbellied stoves and warm school rooms and country churches reminded me of a memorable church service when I was 12 or 13. Mr. Sidney Blanchett, a charter member of Rocky Knoll Baptist Church, on S. C. Hwy. 28, above Walhalla, had built a nice fire in the stove, which stood in the middle of the room of the original wooden building. Sometime between the last hymn and the opening prayer, or maybe during the announcements–I don’t remember exactly–there was a sudden hissing sound and a bright flame at the stove. Mr. Blanchett had left a box of “kitchen” matches on top of the stove! The whole box ignited at once, but there was no damage and no real danger. Shortly thereafter, the service resumed. I wonder what Pastor Paul Hayes preached about after all the commotion? I surely don’t remember.
“Teacher Jim” sounds like a great man. How blessed those children were to be taught in school what Christmas really means. Seems like with progress, while some things improve (like Pap’s wood stove) other things go by the wayside – like taking God/Jesus out of schools.
We had a Christmas pageant at my childhood church, and I was the narrator for many years. We also had a Christmas party with Santa and we all knew who played him, but that didn’t matter. We had to memorize pieces, and one year, I memorized the Night Before Christmas. I still remember a good part of it.
We always used coal to heat and a few pieces of kindling to get the fire started. Mom would put us to bed with the ‘kivers’ pulled to the bottom, then she would hug a quilt around the pot-belly stove and run to our bed while it was hot and put it over us before she pulled the other quilts up. She would say now lay still. She surely didn’t expect us to move under a mountain of quilts. We had a fireplace in one of the houses we lived in. I was spinning around in my ‘circle-trailed’ dress trying to warm the backside when it caught fire. I was not burned because I had a quick-thinking mamaw close by.
I enjoy your posts each and every morning. I especially enjoy reading about days of old and Appalachia Christmases. Thank you for sharing the stories of so many others and how they survived the harsh winters. The human will and spirit are amazing! Prayers for you and your family. Many prayers for Granny’s complete healing. Amen!
The house I grew up in had a furnace and a fireplace. Mother never liked to burn logs in the fireplace because she said it made “a mess.” My grandmother had a wood stove in her house and she also operated a little country store with a wood stove in it. I loved the wood heat in the house, but I was terrified, as a child, of the wood stove in the store. It was a large pot-belly stove in the center of the store and it stayed red hot all winter. When it popped and cracked I thought it was getting ready to explode. I was also afraid I was going to fall onto it. As I got older I learned to appreciate the warm heat it delivered and not to fear it.
Oh yes, the beauty of a fireplace. Randy is right, one side burning up and the other side freezing! Gramma and Papa had four fireplaces in their house and 2 inch thick heart pine floors. I remember helping Gramma cook on the fireplace in the kitchen and toasting marshmallows and hot dogs and just being spoiled by Gramma. Later years, she remodeled her kitchen (after saving her collard, egg, butter and milk money for years) and they closed in the fireplace and put in a wood heater in the den. She would cook on that and we could still roast marshmallows, but it just wasn’t the same. I love a fireplace and the popping and crackling and the settling of the logs. All of you, thanks for the memories! Love and prayers to all of you and Granny and Little Mamas too.
Love these stories. Growing up in California we never got too cold. Then I moved up to the mountains. 6200ft California mountains. The first ski lift was a couple of miles down the road. I opened the build up room door and my small dog ran to get out side, right into a wall of snow. The fireplace was pretty, pretty useless. 1 dog and 3 cats lined up in front of it. When the heater turned on they all ran in front of that. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. I took after my dad in most ways. We prefer to take the harder way, not so many modern conveniences. Appreciate the old ways. When I retired I wasn’t looking for that much in a piece of property. Enough land to grow things, neighbors not too close. Older house to make mine. 2 heating sources. Well rural Arkansas doesn’t have many fireplaces. It’s a southern state, right? never gets cold. -2 degrees last winter. Frozen pipes, and a heater acting up. My Christmas present to me this year? A wood burning stove. 9 days from now it gets installed. I’m getting one that I can put 2 pots on it and cook. This winter is going to be fun.
I love your family Christmas song video! I am guessing maybe Paul puts these together and I can’t imagine the work and talent that takes. Thank you for sharing. I remember being in the basement of our home with my mother as she did the laundry on the old wringer washer and the big metal wash tubs for rinsing. I was a toddler and to keep me safe she corralled me in the blue metal stroller common at that time. We had a huge coal-fired furnace down there that heated the house and I was fascinated with the flames that could be seen through the small window on the front of the furnace. We had an approximately 600 sq. ft. home and the heat the old furnace put up through the grate on the main floor was heavenly. I used to stand on it when I would come in frozen from ice skating on the iced over road in front of our house.
Prayers for Granny and the new little ones coming next year. I like to think they met Pap and Miss Cindy when they were all in heaven together before the babies were chosen to come into your family. I liked to believe that when my grandchildren were born.
By the time I came along Granny had a huge wood cook stove with chrome trim. There were only two rooms in the house: the big eat-in kitchen and the bedroom. The bedroom had a lovely pot-belly stove with a chrome fixture on top.
There was no living room and the out house was the trip down the hill. We had chamber pots and thunder mugs for night-time and the bedridden. The things I remember with the most fondness were the quilts. Such bright beautiful things they were with their intricate geometric patterns. The goose down mattress would fold up and around you if you laid on the bed and those quilts kept you warm.
Loved the story of the teacher letting the kids go out to pick greenery to decorate the school house/church. Them having a little recital and it being faith based makes it even better. The fireplace part the stories reminded me of visiting one of my dad’s uncle that had a farm. Us kids slept in the same room with a fire place in it. I was really little but I still remember getting out of bed onto cold floors to use a pee pot since they didn’t have indoor plumbing at that time on the farm. My sister had a time with me getting me to pee in that pot. I mostly remember my feet were so cold and so was that pee pot. I don’t remember going back to stay overnight after that. The farm was a good memory for me. I loved seeing the cows and pumping water from the well pump, it was all fun to me. We did visit a few other times when they had a family gathering but never stayed longer than a few hours. My dad preferred the comforts of city living to being out in the country.
fireplaces, I agree do not warm a house. They are beautiful though and I can visualize a beautiful fire with a huge log blazing for Christmas.
Even though I grew up in the 1980’s I lived with my grandparents on a farm in rural western NC, they heated only with wood in the wood stove and I’d stand there before bed in my “outen” (flannel) gown until I was about to roast, then run and jump in bed as fast as I could to keep the heat on me until I fell asleep. My children cannot imagine such and if I turn our thermostat below 70 in these mild winters they about freeze. Oh how things have changed!
Sometimes the good ol’days were not always so good. Today’s wood stoves heat so much better, and our houses are insulated. My grandparents heated their house with a radiant oil stove and it got pretty cold in different parts of their house in the winter, but the living room where the heater was and kitchen where grandma cooked stayed pretty warm. Grandma would go into the woods and cut down a cedar tree for their Christmas tree. It smelled so good, but it sure was prickly compared to the pine trees. And our church would have the same type of Christmas program with all of us Sunday school kids reciting different parts that we had to memorize. Good memories!!!!
When I was a child, my dad put a “yuley” on the fire irons because, he said, “your mother wants one.” I remember not knowing what the yuley was, and he told me it was a “big stick.” His people hailed from West Virginia.
Nancy, your yuley and Lassie McCall’s backstick was called a backlog at our house.
I enjoyed reading about Christmas traditions and really can’t imagine cooking and warming by a hearth with no stove or way to keep heat in as opposed to escaping up the chimney. Thinking of wandering the woods and looking for perfect greenery on a winter day sounds good for active kids or active adults! I think today they plop a kid in a desk and he sits there being talked at ceaselessly as the sparkle dims in his mind and body over the next 13 years. Some kids hate sitting and it doesn’t mean they’re “bad”- only active. I can’t stand just sitting on my fat laurels and I gotta get busy every day! It keeps me alive I’m sure! What if schools took to actually teaching life skills like home cooking, cleaning, childcare, fiscal responsibility and polite kindness and the 3R’s? I hope everyone is in excellent health and spirits as Christmas gets closer! Merry Christmas to all!!! The makings and desires of goodness are in place, now we ALL gotta run with it!!!
Many people don’t understand going to bed cold, waking up cold, and then having to get out of bed . . . I worked in a small midwestern rural town and lived in a poorly insulated “summer” apartment on a small lake. It had a furnace, but it was over an unheated garage. I froze every winter. When I could afford it, I finally purchased a kerosene heater. I thought I died and went to heaven. It’s amazing the BTU’s they put out. I miss the smell . . . LOL. As long as I lived up North, I kept a kerosene heater “just in case.” Frozen water pipes are no fun in freezing weather. God bless our ancestors who persevered. May God bless all those who are still cold. And hungry.
I don’t know when or who built the homes of both of my grandparents but each of their homes had 4 fireplaces. I guess they were called double fireplaces, two fireplaces and one chimney. By the time I came along, one of my grandparents had closed up the front of one fireplace and installed a kerosene heater in the room they sit and slept in. The other grandparents had closed two of their fireplaces up and installed a large coal/wood heater in their bedroom and room they stayed in during the day and a smaller two eye coal/wood stove in the room they called the dining room. Grandmother often cooked their meals on this little stove. I remember seeing this stove so hot the sides of the stove and stove pipe would be red. When sitting around this stove one side of you would be cooking while the other side was freezing. In our home there was one fireplace and a kerosene heater in a small room (heating room) in the center of our home. I do remember Daddy putting a larger log in the back of our fireplace but it would no last much more than one day.
When I was young we would have religious Christmas programs at school. It saddens me that my grandkids don’t have this same blessing.
We had a wood heater at home, it was in what we called the sitting room. The rest of the house was freezing. It’s 29 here this morning, a free standing wood heater would be nice to drink coffee around. Central heat’s nice but not the same.
God bless, I’m continuing to pray for Granny.
Ron, when I was going to school we also had religious Christmas programs, and in my third grade class my teacher would have a short devotion each morning and say a blessing each day before we ate lunch. Later on her granddaughter was principal at this same school in the late 80’s and I remember one year before a school program her saying I am told I can no longer do this, but I am going to pray. She did and the audience gave her a standing ovation at the end of her prayer and nothing was ever done about it. We have taken God out of so many things and now wonder why our country is in the mess it is in. I too miss those wood heaters, this central heat and heat pumps ain’t the same. Loose your electricity and you were still warm and if the heater had a flat top you could cook on it.
Loved the story and the Christmas songs last night. It is so sad that the birth of Jesus is left out of the schools today. I remember when our class would go across the street to a little church for weekly religious education. Each child got a Gideon’s New Testament. It is fond memory.
I enjoyed your Christmas song video so much, it was absolutely wonderful! Thank you for sharing heartwarming memories❤ Prayers continue for Granny and the girls and all your family. God bless you and yours❤❤
This brought back memories of being at Papaw’s and Mamaw’s house on the creek. They had a stove in the middle of the sitting room and if you were anywhere else it was cold. It would burn wood or coal. Papaw would throw a piece of coal on it at bedtime to have something left for morning, but that coal would make it so hot you couldn’t stand it. Why it would be cherry red and we all would scoot to bed. The bedrooms were so cold, but Mamaw would bury us neath a pile of quilts. They were so heavy you couldn’t move. Thanks again for memory lane! Blessings to all!
Debbie we had a kerosene heater when I was growing up, I would close the door to my bedroom during the day and night making my room cold, crack open a window in the winter and sleep under a pile of the old time quilts. That was some of the best sleep I have ever had and I never did have a cold. I think today’s home are too hot and sealed up to good for our own good, no fresh air in the house.
Living in the south, we kept warm with either a wood or kerosene or wood stove. I remember putting my jeans or other pieces of clothing on top to warm it up before ‘jumping’ in them and being warm. The things we used to do, back in the day. A lot of what you relate as to what Pap and Granny used to do was things my Hubby and I did as well. Prayers for Granny and you guys. God Bless.