Christmas stockings hanging from a garland-decorated fireplace mantel in a warmly lit room

Wait, Why Do We Hang Christmas Stockings? (Plus 24 Little Gift Ideas)

December 8, 2017

When you bust the holiday decorations out from the attic or basement each year, does your box include a couple of stockings? There’s one for you, one for each person in the house, and maybe even one for the pets. Every year, you hang them on the mantle or by the tree, but do you ever stop to think about why? Sure, the prospect of more presents is reason enough, but the tradition of hanging stockings goes back hundreds of years, through different cultures.

St. Nicholas

One of the stories that started the stocking craze comes from St. Nicholas. That’s right--the very saint who inspired the story of Santa Claus. It’s said that there was a man who lived in St. Nick’s village who couldn’t afford dowries for his three daughters, meaning that they couldn’t marry. St. Nicholas knew that this man would never accept charity face to face, so instead he sneakily threw some gold coins down the family’s chimney. The three daughters had just happened to be doing laundry at the time, and their stockings were hanging by the fireplace to dry. Thus, the gold coins fell into the stockings, where the girls found them the next morning. St. Nicholas was a patron saint in many Central and Western European countries, so the tradition of hanging stockings by the fire took off in places like Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Sometimes oranges are used to represent the coins, since they share a similar hue.

Odin

St. Nicholas doesn’t have a monopoly on foot-related gifts, though! In Northern Europe, where Norse mythology was the main religion before Christianity, there exist different traditions centered around Odin. The king of the Norse gods, Odin was said to travel around the land at the end of the year, looking for brave warriors who could join him in Valhalla. Odin rode a magical eight-legged flying horse named Sleipnir. Children would leave their boots out by the door overnight sometime in December, stuffed with hay and carrots for Sleipnir to eat on his journeys. In the morning, the children would wake to find little presents, presumably left behind by Odin. As Scandinavia transitioned to Christianity, Odin was replaced with St. Nicholas.

In the U.S.A.

These traditions of hanging stockings and leaving out boots traveled to the U.S. with the European immigrants of the 18th and 19th century. The first written acknowledgement of American Christmas stockings comes from a poem written in 1823 that ends with St. Nick having “fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,/And laying his finger aside of his nose/And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.” The tradition stuck, and in America we still hang those stockings as a festive testament to the Yuletide season.

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Searching for some little gifts to fill stockings of your own this year? We’ve got you covered. Below are a couple of categories of products that make the perfect little addition to your festive foot-coverings.