Christmas Stockings

Growing up, my family had a tradition of filling Christmas boots instead of stockings. We each had a little plaster molded boot which looked much like the kind that you might see on Santa's foot, but ours were decorated with Christmas fabrics, coated in a shiny varnish and topped with a border of white, fluffy fur. In my youth, I had never seen a stocking filled on Christmas morning, nor had I ever been the one responsible for filling someone's stocking.

The first year that I had the privilege of filling anyone's Christmas stocking was the Christmas before Andrew and I were married. It was a new, but welcome chore. A few days before Christmas I pulled out the sacks of candies and goodies that I had purchased to fill Andrew's stocking with. There were mints and gum, an orange, some nuts, a bag of peanut butter cups and one of snickers bars, candy canes, peppermint taffy, Chapstick, and a small gift. I began to stuff the stocking with all the treats and surprises, but when I came to the end of my supplies, I found that the stocking still looked rather pathetically empty. It had stretched out a bit, but was nowhere near capacity and no treats could be seen poking out the top.

No problem, I thought, and I went back to the store, grateful that I had started this project early. I bought a few more bags of Christmas candies and took them home and put the new bags into the stocking with the others, but the stocking absorbed the new bags and still wasn't full! The thing just kept stretching! It seemed to have no limit! I think I actually cursed Andrew's grandmother for knitting the stocking in such a huge size!

Once more I went back to the store, determined to make that stocking bulge with Christmas prizes that overflowed the brim.

After that last trip to the store, the sock was still stretching to mock my ignorance, but at last, a few plastic wrappers could be seen peeking from the top, and I hung a few more candy canes from the knitted rim.

On Christmas morning, I carried that stocking downstairs and proudly laid it on the hearth, because I feared that hanging the poor thing would cause the ribbon to snap. When Andrew saw it, he enjoyed a merry laugh at my expense and asked me what on earth I had put in it? I replied that I had only filled his stocking with the traditional items, and that he ought to be grateful because it had cost me a fortune, and what was his grandmother thinking when she made it??

Andrew then informed me that those extra-large stockings were not meant to be "filled" in the way that I had thought, because they will, in fact, stretch enough to hold an elephant along with it's daily supply of food and a ball to play with.

Thanks for telling me that before I cleaned out the candy aisle at Albertson's, Andrew!

Since then, I have thought our Christmas stockings, lovingly knitted by Grandma Kestner, (and one by Aunt Heidi!), to be a priceless treasure, and not at all a dangling Yuletide money pit.

Below is the Christmas stocking poem that I always enjoyed as a child. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Stockings by Esther Kem Thomas

The funniest sight, I do believe,
Is a limpity sock on Christmas Eve--
Empty and flat and wrinkledy, too,
And maybe a mite too big for you,
Cause the bigger the stocking, the more goes in
And it's hung up tight with a safety pin,
And a note with suggestions for Santa Claus
As to whose lengthy stocking, this is, because
Old Santa might wonder if its size could be
A little too big for the size of me....
Oh, nothing looks stranger, I do believe,
Than a limpity stocking, on Christmas Eve!

The jolliest sight, I'd surely say,
Is a knobbledy sock on Christmas Day,
With an orange way down in its bulged out toe,
And some big walnuts where a heel should go,
And a horn, and a toy, and a lollipop,
And all sorts of things sticking out the top!
Why, the bigger its stuffed and away oversize
The better! Each bulge is a brand new surprise,
And the funniest thing, I can't believe
It's the limpity sock I hung up, Christmas Eve!