OK, why stockings? Yes, it makes sense that there should be a connection between Santa
Claus and the giving of small gifts. And yes, it makes sense that there should be some sort
of receptacle to hold those gifts. After all, who wants to deal with the chaos and bloodshed
of one child's toys getting mixed up with his or her brother's? But why stockings? There
are few other contexts under which we look at old socks and think, "Hey! Gifts!" Why not
a bowl or a ski-hat or a suitcase?
The short answer is, nobody knows. There are a couple of competing theories, but like
most American Christmas traditions, the whole stocking thing sprang up suddenly about a
hundred years ago and became widespread almost immediately without much
documentation. One year, stockings were just something you wore under your shoes, the
next, seemingly, they were an entrenched part of Christmas tradition.
One theory is that is a Northern European tradition that became popular in the late 1800's
when waves of immigrants arrived from Germany and Scandinavia. In some parts of
Europe, stockings are traditionally hung by the fireplace or by a window on St. Andrew's
Eve on November 29th. In parts of France and Germany and Holland, footwear is put out
on Christmas Eve, but usually in the form of shoes, which are a powerful folk symbol. An
old German custom was to place shoes at the foot of the bed to drive away der alp, or nightmare.
(The custom of tying shoes to a car or carriage at weddings is probably unrelated, though
really interesting. It was a fertility symbol. Shoes are a traditional symbol of female
anatomy. The old nursery rhyme of ``There was an old woman who lived in her shoe; she
had so many children she didn't know what to do'' was originally less of a children's rhyme
than a warning from mothers to their teenage daughters to straighten up and fly right.)
Another theory involves folklore surrounding St. Nicholas - not the round, rolly-polly
Santa Claus, but the original 3rd century saint from Turkey, a very funky character who is
the patron saint of pawn-brokers and is credited with raising children from the dead after
they'd been slain by unethical sausage makers. (The early church was not for the
squeamish.) Folklore has it that Nicholas would travel through cities at night and toss gold
balls or bags of coins through the windows or chimneys of poor-but-worthy virgins who
had no dowry to get married with. There is a traditional story that says that one gold ball
or bag of coins fell down a chimney and was saved from the fire by falling into a stocking
that was hung by the fireplace to dry, starting the tradition of gifts in socks.
In this country, the stocking custom was probably popularized by Clement A. Moore's
poem, ``A Visit From St. Nicholas'' in 1822. You know the one - ``The stockings were
hung by the chimney with care...''. Interestingly, for a number of years in the 1800's,
families placed their gifts either on a Christmas tree or in
stockings. Harsh words were written in newspaper editorials by adherents of each custom,
blasting the other. Eventually, a cultural compromise was struck and starting at about the
turn of the century, most families started using both.
Until comparatively recently, Christmas gifts, if they were given at all, were small tokens -
simple toys, fruit, nuts, cookies and for the adults, tobacco, new handkerchiefs or
suspenders. It's interesting that, in spite of much more extravagant holiday gift-giving,
those are still the types of presents that are found in stockings today.
