East Oregonian : E.O

The Christmas Stocking

I used to wonder, as you perhaps have wondered, why it was a stocking you were hanging on the mantel-shelf and not something much bigger that would hold many more gifts? I used to wonder.

One Christmas Eve I went to my nurse with a large laundry bag and begged that I might hang that up instead of a stocking, so that I might find it full of beautiful gifts in the morning.

“Sure, it's bigger than old Saint Nick's bag, itself,” she exclaimed. “Would you be a selfish child on this Christmas Eve and keep all the lovely gifts for yourself?” and to my disappointment she put away the big bag and hung my tiny sock above the fireplace.

Now the question of why I should hang up a stocking and not a bag or a pillowcase or place before the chimney place a box or other receptacle bothered me quite a little, and I determined to find out the reason for the custom. Full of my queries I approached my father after all the excitement of Christmas morning was over, and in answer to my questions this is what he said:

The custom of hanging up stockings on Christmas Eve comes to us from a land far across the ocean—from Sunny Italy. In the city of Padua, long ago, good old Saint Nicholas used to go about the streets after dark and throw through the windows of the homes of the poor people long knitted purses, tied at both ends, and containing much needed coins. These purses were made of yarn, and when united looked not unlike a footless stocking.

Finally, as time went on, the poor people, hoping thus to remind the more fortunate of their needs, used to hang these empty purses out of the windows on the night before Christmas, so that a gift might be placed in them. In the north country, where the weather is cold at Christmas time the purses were hung by the chimney place in the hope that Saint Nicholas would drop his offering down the chimney. When the purses went out of fashion, stockings as the thing most like them were used in their stead and that is why we today still observe the practice and the custom.