Working Class Love Notes #7: Appalachian Old Christmas

Celebrate with me on January 6th

apple stack cake and morning coffee in my new mug Sarah gifted me

Dear friends,

I hope this newsletter finds you resting and restoring in this liminal space at the end of 2024 and a day before 2025. My greatest hope is that as many of us as possible have been able to retreat a bit, surround ourselves with coziness and loved ones, restoring before we face whatever lies ahead for us in 2025, both the difficult things and the joys and happy surprises that will surely happen, too.

This year, I’ve adopted a very old working class mountain Christmas tradition that I want to share with you: Appalachian Old Christmas. Despite this region being my home, I’d never known about it and never celebrated it myself, but was delighted to learn about it through my friend and mentor Shawna Kay Rodenberg’s beautiful Patreon newsletter which you should subscribe to right away. Thank you, Shawna, for providing some of the research I’m sharing here and for the inspiration.

I celebrated early this year, but still plan on doing a small celebration on January 6th. Maybe you’ll join me?

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Appalachian Old Christmas

Appalachian Old Christmas is celebrated on January 6th each year, the same day as the Christian Feast of Epiphany, so if you want to celebrate this year, you still have plenty of time. Mike Templeton gives a great overview in this article on Appalachian Christmas Folkways.

So why January 6th? Templeton says: “Perhaps the most interesting of Appalachian beliefs at Christmas is what is now referred to as ‘Old Christmas.’ In many parts of the Appalachian region, and some to this day, Christmas is not celebrated on December 25th. Christmas Day is on January 6th, also the Epiphany. This date is now referred to as Old Christmas. In 1752, England and Scotland abandoned the old Julian calendar which had been in use since Roman times and adopted the Gregorian calendar. This change eliminated 11 days from the year. Many of the earliest settlers in the Appalachian region of English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish descent still adhered to the old Julian calendar. As a result, January 6^th remained Christmas Day in the Appalachian regions, and some people still celebrate Old Christmas in January.”

So you know the famous Christmas Carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas”? Those are the twelve days between December 25th and January 6th. December 25th is “New Christmas” and for those who celebrate, January 6th is “Old Christmas.” In this house, we now celebrate both.

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Apple Stack Cake

The most important element of Appalachian Old Christmas is the Apple Stack Cake. Back in the day, fruit cakes were the traditional Christmas cake, but fruit cake could be expensive to make and fruit difficult to come by in the mountains, but one thing we always had on hand were apples. Much of Appalachian culture and folk magic uses things that are affordable, easy to preserve, and readily available so our Christmas cake is the Apple Stack Cake which is a layered cake made of a combination of apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg with variations on the other ingredients depending on the church cookbook or family recipe you’re using, but it often includes molasses, apple butter, and powdered sugar. The cake is made up of a stack of thin almost pancake-like layers of apple molasses flavored goodness with a delicious layer of apple butter between each stack holding it together. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top and it’s ready to serve.

One of the most important things to note about the Apple Stack Cake is that it’s magic. That’s right: magic. It’s said that an apple stack cake has healing properties and it will bring good fortune in the new year to all those who eat it.

This year, my first year, I celebrated with one of my best friends and a fellow Eastern Kentuckian, Sarah Hunt and her family, including her two little ones, Mary Charlotte (MC) and new baby John to celebrate early since it was the only time we could get together before January 6th. After combing through multiple recipes, most of which were simultaneously too vague and too advanced for our first year, we settled on a recipe from Pike County: Margie Bartley’s 100 year old Old Fashioned Stack Cake, handwritten on notebook paper in the same style cursive writing I grew up reading from my Mom and grandmothers. (Also check out Shawna Kay’s beautiful NINE EGG family stack cake recipe.)

We fumbled the first layer, but by the second one, we were flying. We ended up with four layers which was great for our first attempt without an on-site Mamaw supervising, plus the first layer was still delicious for snacking. As Sarah said quoting The Great British Bakeoff’s Paul Hollywood “bit rough and ready, but the flavors are lovely.”

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Share a good story

Appalachians are incredible story tellers so any gathering has to involve sharing a good story. Family memories, a heartfelt Christmas story, or even a ghost story like the Victorian era Christmas tradition in England are all good options. After baking, we settled in for one of our favorite Christmas stories featuring one of our most beloved angels: the 1986 made for TV classic A Smoky Mountain Christmas starring Dolly Parton, a movie I watched annually with my Mom growing up.

The movie is an adaptation of Snow White featuring Dolly as a famous country singer who hides out in the smoky mountains for some peace and quiet only to stumble upon seven young children who have escaped from an abusive orphanage, a witch, and a handsome recluse named Mountain Dan played by Lee Majors. Also, there’s a delightful appearance by John Ritter and some of THE BEST Dolly Christmas songs in existence. You can find some of them on her A Holly Dolly Christmas album. “All Wrapped Up In You” and “Smoky Mountain Christmas” are my two favorites. (also, not featured on this album, but add “Hard Candy Christmas” from her album with Kenny Rogers to the list, too)

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More magic

The stack cake isn’t the only magic afoot on Appalachian Old Christmas. According to our folklore, you can find all the animals kneeling at midnight on Old Christmas Eve, January 5th, and some of them can even tell you the future.

According to Mike Templeton’s article: “The prevailing belief that animals kneeled on Christmas Eve was common for a long time. You could count on good luck in the coming year if you found a cricket on your hearth. And if you happened to be a young woman who visited a hog pen at midnight on Christmas Eve, you could divine the kind of man you were going to marry. If an old hog grunted first, you would marry an old man. If a young hog grunted first, your future man would be young and handsome.”

This latest holiday episode of Old Gods of Appalachia does a beautiful job of bringing the magic of Appalachian Old Christmas to life. I really recommend it and this episode isn’t scary at all — just enchanted.

I didn’t encounter any kneeling animals or fortune-telling pigs at our early celebration, but Mary Charlotte did bury me in plush dogs and I think that should count for something.

Me buried in dogs isn’t much different than my regular life with my dogs Brew and Verona.

She eventually rescued me

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And of course, it’s all about love.

Most of all, Appalachian Old Christmas is to love on your people, both those who are still with us and those who have passed. I wore my Chicago Cubs shirt in honor of my Dad, we always got him a new Cubs baseball hat every Christmas, and I got to hold John, Sarah’s new baby, while I celebrated with one of my dearest friends and knew my beloved husband and pets were waiting on me at home. Something about this moment, me honoring my Dad and holding baby John says so much: all of those we love, past present and future, is really what matters most this time of year. And that kind of love is magical.

Me and Baby John

Happy Appalachian Old Christmas from my house to yours. I’ll be doing a smaller celebration at home with my beloveds and sending love to you and yours. If you celebrate this year, let me know. In the meantime, I’m sending you magic, ease, and joy until we meet again.

Love, Beth