My mother, who was born in 1914, grew up on a farm in Union County, Tennessee. Raising a family and making a life out of the rocky red dirt was never easy, but both my mother and my grandmother were always proud to declare that they always had enough to eat even though in other parts of the United States, people were standing in lines at soup kitchens or choking on dust or hurling themselves out of windows. My mother reminded me countless times that in those days a dime was a lot of money.

“But what was Christmas like?” I would ask.

The way my mother would tell it, I can almost taste their Christmas dinner: a ham from the smoke house, potatoes brought from the dark house and mashed with fresh milk and churned butter and seasonal greens from the garden. My grandmother would have canned green beans and tomatoes. They might have dined on those or perhaps pinto beans with spicy homemade chow chow and hot cornbread to round out the meal. For dessert, my grandmother would have made a stack cake using the apples she had dried the previous summer.

My mother added that for Christmas, each child received an orange and a stick of horehound candy. “That’s it?” I would exclaim.

“That’s it, and we were glad to get it.” Mom told me she would carry her orange around for a few days to savor the smell of it before she finally savored the taste of it.

To my mind, horehound, produced from an herb known for its medicinal properties, was no gift at all. Sucking horehound is purportedly a restorative that is good for colds and digestive problems. But it’s also known for its bitter taste. I know. My dad used to bring it home. Not candy!

So for Christmas, my mom received an orange from the distant tropics of Florida followed by a dose of medicine.