Nearly everyone hangs Christmas Stockings by their fireplace over the Christmas period. In this day and age, we seem to have so many traditions and habits and I have done a little research into this to discover just how this particular tradition came about.
The Christmas stocking was originally related to the life of Saint Nicholas and traditionally was hung by the fireplace on Saint Nicholas’ day which is the 6th of December for Western Christian countries and the 19th of December in the East. Saint Nicholas has the reputation of the bringer of gifts and is the basis for the American Santa Claus and the British Father Christmas.
The origin of the Christmas Stocking is of folklore and legend. However, the most popular version and the one that underlies most of the others is that in the early 1800’s there was a very poor man who had three beautiful daughters. The man had no money to marry his daughters so prayed every night as he was afraid what would become of them. One evening Saint Nicholas was passing through the village when he heard the poor mans prayers. On looking through the window he saw the girls stockings hanging by the fire to dry. He threw a bag of gold through the window into three of the stockings. Upon waking the poor man discovered the gold and was overjoyed. The tradition of the poor hanging stockings by the fire was born and spread year on year throughout the villages in Christian lands.
Traditionally, the stocking would be one of the children’s everyday socks and the gifts placed in the stocking was all that the child would receive over the festive period. Now we have personalised Christmas stockings for the children and the majority of the gifts are laid under the Christmas tree.
The stockings were traditionally filled with small toys, fruit and coins. Now we have unique chocolate gifts perfect for stocking fillers and many more surprises that we can pop inside.
*This is a collaborative post*
I didn’t realise that that was how stockings came about!