Or as someone changed it Dinner All Day and
Preachin’ on the Ground.
Here in
Missouri as the population grew, small churches spring up in rural
communities. A popular celebration was
everyone going to church for services and sharing lunch before having another
service or a singin’ before going home.
Yes, it was called preachin’ and singin’. We hill folks often dropped
our g’s.
The ladies brought their specialties for
lunch. Potato salad, sweet potatoes with
sugar syrup of course, cake, and pie. My mother’s specialty was hot rolls. I
can smell them now. She made them in a large baking pan and the rolls
overflowed the sides of the pan.
In
early days, the meat provided might be wild game. My grandmother told the story
of having nothing to take to the church dinner.
She was ashamed they were so poor they didn’t have anything to
share. So she and her sister-in-law
improvised and cooked a possum. She said
everyone complimented her on the meat and didn’t think anything about the fact
that it was possum.
If the church had a table or two to take
outside, lunch was spread on the tables.
In a pinch, a couple of boards on sawhorses would suffice. Little girls wore their best dresses and were
careful not to get them dirty as they sat on the ground to eat.
I discovered the practice went back to Old
Testament times. Many of the Jews had
returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon. They had rebuilt the temple and
the walls of the city. They came
together in Jerusalem to hear Ezra, priest and teacher read from the Law.
Ezra, the scribe stood on a high wooden
platform built for that purpose. All the
people stood up as Ezra read from the Law of Moses. Ezra read from daybreak until noon and all
the people listened.
Afterward the Governor Nehemiah told them to
be joyful, to go home and eat and drink.
He also instructed them to share with those who did not have food.
