Prompt for December 18:Christmas Stockings-
Did you have one? Where did you hang it? What did you get in it? Do you have any Christmas stockings used by your ancestors?
I did have a Christmas stocking, but it may not have been until I was about 13. The picture above was taken in 1970, I believe shortly after my siblings and I decorated the felt stockings Mom made for us. They are lined up in our birth order, so mine is on the left, followed by Karen's, Mark's, Brian's, and Mary's. I do remember that Brian and Mary were fairly young when we got the stockings as Karen and I actually did the decorations on theirs, so it may have been earlier than 1970 (but no earlier than 1964).
To the left and right are pictures of Mark, Brian and Mary looking in their stockings on Christmas mornings in 1971 and 1973 respectively.
We didn't have a fireplace growing up, so the stockings were hung from a drawer in an etagere in the living room while they were empty. They were too full to stay hung there after they were filled, so I think they were laid out on a coffee table.
I don't remember exactly what we got in them. I think there was tangerines, walnuts, and candy, and little unwrapped gifts that were small enough to fit in them. By 1979, even our basset hound, Barney, got his own stocking filled with doggy toys and treats.
My husband Mark still has his stocking from childhood. His mother, Jewel Moore Gresham, made it for him when he was little (maybe around 1944?) and saved it for years. He found it among her things after she passed away in 1994. It hangs above our (unused) fireplace today, flanked by Eric's and my store-bought, fuzzy red stockings with white cuffs, with our names in green glitter glue.
(Post #18 in the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories hosted by Geneabloggers.com; originally published December 18, 2009.)
© Amanda Pape - 2010
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