Loretta Lynn Recalled Wearing a Flour-Sack Dress to Christmas Church Services as a Child: ‘Mommy and Daddy Were so Poor’

Country music icon Loretta Lynn once opened up about what Christmas in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, was like in her childhood when her family was “so poor.”

Since her parents didn’t have much money, they had to repurpose what they could from household items. So, her mother made dresses out of flour sacks for Lynn and her sisters. And they would wear them on Christmas to catch the preacher’s sermon.

Loretta Lynn said ‘Christmas was not much of a celebration’ in her childhood

Lynn was the second of eight children born in a coal-mining family in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky. In her autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, she shared holidays in the holler were more about family and faith and less about getting new things.

“Christmas was not much of a celebration because Mommy and Daddy were so poor,” Lynn explained in a 2019 interview with Southern Living. “They didn’t have money to buy stuff.”

Loretta Lynn recalled wearing a ‘little flour-sack dress’ to watch the preacher’s Christmas sermon as a child

Lynn’s parents couldn’t often afford new things, but her mother would repurpose items around the house for gifts. For instance, she turned flour sacks into dresses for her young daughters.

Lynn got her first floral dress when the flour companies printed flowers on their bags. And the family would wear their most fabulous homemade outfits on special occasions like Christmas. “Every year, the preacher would say the Gospel on the hill, and I would wear my little flour-sack dress,” she recalled. “It was button-down to the waist in the front.”

Lynn’s family decorated their tree with homemade tinsel composed of shiny wrappers from tobacco tins. They’d pop popcorn to snack on, but it would also warm up their little cabin. “We’d eat our popcorn and look at our tree,” she recalled (Southern Living). “We waited all year for it.”

“That was our Christmas,” the Grammy-winning artist added. “We loved it.”

Loretta Lynn’s family survived winters by eating bread and gravy

The family was “so poor” that they would sometimes get through winters by eating bread and gravy for weeks (Southern Living). She said the closest thing she had to ice cream when she was a kid was snow with milk and sugar sprinkled over it.

When Lynn was growing up, the tiny mining town didn’t even have paved roads or electricity. So, she didn’t see her first Christmas lights until she was 12, and her family caught them in a nearby town called Van Lear.

Holidays in Lynn’s later years before her death in 2022 were much different. Her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren would gather at her ranch. “We have a good time,” she told Southern Living. “I get those kids anything they want.”

Lynn said her big family would have whatever they liked to eat, but their holiday meal usually included her mother’s recipe for chicken and dumplings. “And we have candy,” she said. “Back then, if we got half a stick of candy, we were in heaven.”