It's Christmas Eve, and I am making a Mexican pot roast. I hesitate to call it "birria" because that would suggest a height of authenticity I'm not seeking. I didn't use the dark, smoky dried peppers that birria calls for; just jalapeños from the farmers' market. I'm working in the spirit of the old ladies of the U.S. South who would throw a packet of taco seasoning on something, call it "Mexican," and write up the recipe for the church or temple or Junior League cookbook.
Some curiosities of cultural understanding are best accepted at face value. Amanda Beardsley Trulock, coming from Puritan Connecticut, always insisted that Christmas was primarily a Black holiday. From her first Christmas in Georgia in 1837: "I am very busy a fixing my negroes for Christmast, that being a hollowday with them, it is one that is much thought of by us all, and as a matter of course everyone must have a new dress, and their Hats newley trimmed & &, and they think that there is no one that can excel their new Mistress in fashions."
Ten years later, in 1847, Amanda wrote from Arkansas: "Christmast is a great day here, amongst the blacks particularly, they have four or five days, and give great dinner parties, but I have heard but very little said about it this year."
The 40 people Amanda's husband enslaved were still recovering from the move from Georgia two years earlier, and were still, by her account, dispirited. (One might argue that there was some projection in her account of their low spirits, too.)
The Trulocks had engaged a Northerner, Ann Kirkwood, to teach their children and run a small boarding school. She had sent "the Misses" home for a three- or four-day holiday, and intended to go out visiting on Christmas herself, and so, Amanda wrote, "upon the whole I think that it will be rather a loansome day to us."
Five years later (Dec. 20, 1852), and three years after her husband's death, Amanda painted a more cheerful scene: "Christmast being near at hand, and as that is a season that is thought much of by many, and more particularly by the Coloured Gentry in a Southern clime, and as there are many on this place that are desirous of having a quilting, and giving a great dinner on the occasion, I thought I would try to indulge them; as they have all done so remarkably well the year past."
Once again, Amanda was sewing to clothe the people she enslaved; now they were making her rich: "I really think they are deserving a great deal of praise, so for their gratification my time has been entirely employed, for two weeks past, in making up that Callico I purchased in B. Port. With Caroline's assistance I have cut and made fifteen dresses ..."
On Dec. 25, 1852, Amanda wrote to her brother: "As the Coloured Gentry seems (and more particularly at this time) to be a very important part of community, I think I shall venture to write more about them, as they all seem very happy, and are very much engaged in fixing and prepairing to give a great dinner next week, which is to consist of various kinds of meats, such as Turkies, Chickens, Pigs, Beef &c with a great variety of Pastry. I persume that Cousin B[uell] and myself will be invited to grace the first table."
On Christmas Day in 1857, the sun shone in Jefferson County, but the ground was covered with snow. Amanda wrote not of sewing but of Orrin's distribution of food: "Orren is now giving out flour and such things to the blacks for Christmas ... to the people for Christmas. They are expecting to give a dinner on Monday and have a dance in the evening." Amanda repeated herself (as many of us do when writing a letter) after a page break. I think her substitution of "the people" for "the blacks" is worth preserving, if only as an indicator of the speech ways of the master class.
Amanda's last account of Christmas celebrated on a slave plantation came a few days later on Thursday, Dec. 31, 1857, when she once again mentioned making some dresses for "the servants."
"I like to have forgotten to tell you," she added, "that our people had a week for their Holidays and that they danced every night but Sunday night and that to day is the first of their going to work." A dance the previous Thursday (Dec. 24) had lasted almost all night. One slave, Charles, had danced "Jump Jim Crow"--a song and dance that originated with white minstrels some 30 years earlier.
Brooke Greenberg lives in Little Rock. Email [email protected].