# **Christmas Days in Old Virginia**

In 1907, Booker T. Washington wrote about his memories of Christmas in
Franklin County in an article written for both Suburban Life and
Tuskegee Student magazines.

In Virginia, where I was born, Christmas lasts not one day but a week,
sometimes longer - at least, that is the way it was in the old slave
days. Looking back to those days, when Christmas, for me, was a much
more momentous event than it is now, it seems to me that there was a
certain charm about that Virginia Christmas time, a peculiar fragrance
in the atmosphere, a something which I cannot define, and which does not
exist elsewhere in the same degree, where it has been my privilege to
spend the Christmas season.

In the first place, more is made of the Christmas season in Virginia, or
used to be, than in most other states. Furthermore, at the time to which
I refer, people lived more in the country than they do now; and the
country, rather than the city, is the place for one to get wholesome
enjoyment out of the Christmas season. There is nothing in a crowded
life that can approach the happiness and general good feeling which one
may have in the country, especially when the snow is upon the ground,
the trees are glittering with icicles, and the Christmas odors are in
the air.

Christmas was the great event of the whole year to the slaves throughout
the south, and in Virginia, during the days of slavery, the colored
people used to begin getting ready for Christmas weeks beforehand. It
was the season when, in many cases, the slaves who had been hired out to
other masters came home to visit their families. Perhaps the husband had
been away from his wife for twelve months; he was permitted on Christmas
to come home. Perhaps children had been hired out in another part of the
state, or another part of the country, away from their mothers for six
to twelve months; they were permitted to come home at Christmas.

It was made known during these holidays which slaves were to remain on
the home plantation, which ones were to be hired out to the neighboring
farmers, and which ones were to be sold. It was an important period to
the slaves in many ways, but the feelings of joy at the reunion of the
family prevailed above all others.

There were a number of festivities which led up to Christmas and
prepared for it. One of them was the corn-shucking. No one who has not
actually experienced an old-fashioned corn-shucking in Virginia can
understand exactly what I mean. These corn-shucking bees, or whatever
the may be called, took place during the last of November, or the first
half of December. As I have said, they were a prelude to the festivities
of the Christmas season. Usually they were held upon one of the larger
and wealthier plantations in the neighborhood. After all the corn had
been gathered, thousands of bushels sometimes, it would be piled up in
the shape of a mound, often to the height of fifty or sixty feet.
Invitations would be sent around by the master himself to the
neighboring planters, inviting their slaves on a certain night to attend
the corn-shucking. In response to these invitations as many as one or
two hundred men, women and children would come together.

When all were assembled around the pile of corn, some one individual,
who had already gained a reputation as a leader in singing, would climb
on top of the mound and begin at once, in clear, loud tones, a solo -- a
song of the corn-shucking season -- a kind of singing which I am sorry
to say has very largely passed from memory and practice. After leading
off in this way, in clear, distinct tones, the chorus at the base of the
mound would join in, some hundred voices strong. The words, which were
largely improvised, were very simple and suited to the occasion, and
more often than not they had the flavor of the camp-meeting rather than
any more secular proceeding. Such singing I have never heard on any
other occasion. There was something wild and weird about that music,
such as will never again be hear in America.

While the singing was going on, hundreds of hands were busily engaged in
shucking corn. The corn-shucking and the music would continue, perhaps,
until ten o'clock at night. The music made the work light and pleasant.
In a very short time, almost before any one realized it, hundreds of
bushels of corn had been shucked. About that time a break would come.
Everybody would be invited to a grove or some convenient place for
supper, which was served in a sumptuous manner. After an hour, perhaps,
spent around the table, the corn shucking, with more music, was begun
again, and continued until late into the night, often into the early
hours of the morning.

This was one of the incidents which usually proceeded a Virginia
Christmas time. There is another which I still vividly remember. It was
at this season that the year's crop of hogs was killed, and the meat for
the ensuing year was cured and stored away in the smokehouse. This came,
as a rule, during the week before Christmas, and was, as I recollect it,
one of the annual diversions of plantation life. I recall the great
blazing fire flaring up in the darkness of the night, and grown men and
women moving about in the flickering shadows. I remember with what
feelings of mingled horror and hungry anticipation I looked at the long
rows of hogs hung on the fence-rail, preparatory to being cut up and
salted away for the year. For days after this event every slave cabin
was supplied with materials for a sumptuous feast.

Such simple and commonplace diversions as these broke the monotony of
plantation life. Coming directly as they did before the Christmas
holidays, they served to emphasize in the minds of the slaves the joyous
season they ushered in.

Christmas itself, as I have said, meant a cessation of work for a week
at least, and often as long as ten days. Christmas day the slaves would
each receive something in the way of a present. The master who gave no
present to his slaves was looked down upon by his fellow-masters. He was
considered unworthy to be classed among slave-holding aristocracy. The
presents, in most cases, consisted of a new suit of clothes, or a new
pair of shoes. I remember that the first pair of shoes I ever had the
opportunity if wearing came to me in the shape of a Christmas present.
Later on, when the war was going on between the North and South, we felt
the pinch of hard times on our plantation. I received as a Christmas
present a pair of wooden shoes - that is, the uppers were composed of
leather, but the soles were composed of hickory wood.

In those days, the old people, as well as the young, used to hang up
their stockings. The household slaves, and many who worked in the field
as well, would hang their stockings in their master's or mistress's
rooms. The children usually hung their stockings in the cabins of their
parents. It has been my pleasure and privilege to receive many Christmas
presents, but I do not think I ever had a present that made me feel more
happy than those I received during what was, as I remember, the last
Christmas I spent in slavery. I awoke at four o'clock in the morning in
my mother's cabin, and creeping over to the chimney, I found my stocking
well-filled with pieces of red candy and nearly half a dozen ginger
cakes. In addition to these were the little wooden shoes with the
leather tops, which I mentioned.

The Christmas season ended with the cutting of the "Yule Log" for the
next Christmas. My readers will know something of the "Yule Log," but
will scarcely understand what the custom meant in the old days in the
South, unless they have seen the "Yule Log" cut, and have counted he
days that it burned.

On many of the plantations in Virginia it was the custom for the men to
go out into the swamps on the last day of the Christmas season, select
the biggest, toughest and greenest hardwood tree they could find, and
cut it in shape to fit the fireplace in the master's room. Afterwards
this log would be sunk into water, where it would remain the entire
succeeding year. On the first day of the following Christmas, it would
be taken out of the water; the slaves would go into the master's room
before he got out of bed on Christmas morning, and with a song and other
ceremonies, would place this log on the fireplace of the master, and
would light it with fire.

It was understood that the holiday season would last until this log had
been burned into two parts. Of course, the main point in the selection
of the "Yule Log" was to get one that would be tough and unburnable, so
that it would last as many days as possible. At the burning out of the
log, there was usually another ceremony of song. This meant that
Christmas was over.

As I look back in my memory to those Christmas days, thus spent as a
slave-boy in Virginia. The present stiff and staid customs, which
prevail, especially in the larger cities, seem to me "flat, stale, and
unprofitable."

Again I repeat, that in my opinion the real Christmas must be spent in
the country, and I cannot but feel that there is in the Virginia
Christmas atmosphere a fragrance and an influence which is not to be
found elsewhere."