I'm not sure if a lot of people have Christmas traditions or not - and I sometimes wonder if WE as a family have enough of them! Nevertheless, we have a few and those are the ones I want to write about!
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care! Oh, those wonderful and delightful Christmas stockings that we hang on the fireplace! This tradition started when I was a little girl - mom and dad always had a sock for each of us and of course we would rush in to open our socks on Christmas morning before breakfast!
I fondly remember part of the contents of those socks - there was always an apple, orange, banana and some mixed nuts in the shell! Little did I realize at that time, that the purpose of putting fruit in the socks was to fill the space!! That way, you didn't have to put so many other things inside! I'm sure we also received a couple of small items in our socks, along with the fruit but the fruit is what I remember!
When I got married and had kids, the sock tradition continued! After moving to W. Park, a good friend of mine had her mom make us all socks on her knitting machine - they were red, green, and white with our names at the top and a neat pattern in the middle! We all LOVE those socks and of course continue to use them to this day!
Of course, once the girls married, I had to add 3 "manly" looking socks for the guys and as the grandkids are born, there are more added all the time!
As far as filling the socks, we change from year to year - I used to do all the filling but then it got to the point that the stocking stuffers were costing more than the gifts!! I also used to WRAP each stuffer - try wrapping 10 stocking stuffers per person times 7 adults plus kids - it was just TOO MUCH!!
I DO NOT wrap the stocking stuffers now - and the 4 of us girls now buy 3 items for each girls' sock and we fill our husband's socks ourselves - they're much harder to buy for! And we limit the stuffer to $1.00 per item! You'd be amazed how many things you can buy at the dollar store!
I'm sure our stocking tradition will continue throughout the years! And I sometimes believe that the socks are more fun than the gifts!
2 comments:
Oooh - I like the $1 item tradition!! I might start that here!
Sam fills my stocking and I fill his. I put an orange in his along with the rest of the gifts because that was the tradition in his family.
My parents always put something tooth related in ours - like a toothbrush or floss - so I've started that now with ours.
Even Max has a stocking in our house - he gets a bone or stuffed animal in his!
I am still wrapping my stocking stuffers and my problem is that so many of the things I buy don't fit into the sock any more!
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