They were brown. They were cotton. They were utilitarian. Let’s face it ~ they were ugly. Held up by garters dangling from a garter belt, they were the brown stockings girls wore in winter time in my pre-teen and teenage years. The stockings were usually misshapen and stretched because of different leg lengths of growing sisters sharing the stockings.
They did have one redeeming quality at Christmas time. It was their ability to stretch and be a vessel for things besides young girls’ legs. The boys had socks as well but they were much shorter and didn’t stretch as easily. Being quite magnanimous, and probably with parental encouragement, we allowed the boys to borrow a stocking or two at Christmas time. Any image of boys wearing garter belts and brown stockings would be laughable, but wrong. It was for this very much needed Christmas utility that even the little ones borrowed our stockings.
Very carefully on Christmas Eve, at least six clean stockings were draped across the back of sofa and chair ~ or were they hung by the chimney with care? And the number of stockings varied with which kids had grown out of such myth and magic. Each stocking was labeled just in case Santa couldn’t tell which stocking was for which kid. Cookies and milk set out for Santa Claus completed the magic show scene.
Christmas morning the ugly brown stockings had been transformed. They were absolutely filled with candy and nuts - a Mandarin orange in the toe and a candy cane sprouting from the top. The flat and unassuming stockings were treasure chests of goodness, even better than Hallowe’en hauls of candy. Coming down the stairs on Christmas morning was a sight to behold. Each stocking and a Santa Claus present awaited the child giddy with expectation. The stockings were unceremoniously emptied and tossed aside. They would be laundered and worn in the winter prairie days to the skating rink or just a walk downtown.
That ugly and utilitarian could be transformed into beautiful and exciting by the magical perception of a child has not been lost on me as an adult. It exists still in my heart and memory, returning to me each Christmas with the feeling of home, family and magic.
“Christmas is the keeping-place for memories of our innocence.”
~ Joan Mills
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