How Personalized Christmas Stockings Got Started
Nothing says “you belong to our tribe” as much as being given a personalized Engraved Christmas Ornaments stocking to match the rest of the family. Christmas stockings — or shoes to be filled with small gifts — have been around for a long time. The tradition is widely thought to have originated in Germany, and the earliest recorded stories include the children using their own, everyday, socks, or shoes to receive the gifts.According to Phyllis Siefker’s book, Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years, the Christmas stocking custom came from the Germanic figure Odin. Odin had a flying horse named Sleipnir. The children would fill boots with food for Sleipnir (carrots, sugar, straw), and leave the boots near the fireplace. Odin would then leave gifts or candy in the boots. Phyllis Seifker reports that the custom remained after Christianity came into practice in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, and was joined with Nicholas to evolve into our Santa Claus.The book 4000 Years of Christmas: A gift from the Ages by Earl W. Count and Alice Lawson Count gives the history of a variety of Christmas customs. They report that children who live in an areas known as the Lower Rhineland at the border of Holland and Germany put out clogs for gifts on December 6 (the anniversary of St. Nicholas’s death), and they put grain in the clogs for St. Nicholas’s horse. Instead of clogs, children sometimes set out small wooden ships, for the saint who protected those who travel by sea. Both clogs and the wooden ships would be set by the chimney, and St. Nicholas would visit in the night to leave his gifts.According to Christmas in Colonial and Early America: Christmas Around the World from World Book, Inc,, in colonial America (late 1700s), children were likely to receive “a kiss and a small toy”. In the colonies settled by the French, mention is made that the French children hung their stockings to be filled with candies and small toys by Papa Noel.it seems that until the 1900s, children hung just a regular sock by the chimney, and that actually personalized stockings used only at Christmas did not come into use until early in the 20th century
