Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas in many homes without a Christmas stocking! Small children, and many not so small, look forward eagerly to hanging up their stockings on Christmas Eve and finding them chuck-full Christmas morning...The Pioneer, 24 December 1927.
“Christmas stockings have come down to us from the good St. Nicholas who was a saint born 6 December 342 in Lycia, in the Middle East. He was regarded especially the patron saint of children. His parents were wealthy and he was left quite a fortune. He was very generous and loved to give little gifts to needy folk. But he didn’t give in order to be thanked, and so he tried to give his presents without anyone knowing who sent them. Often when it was dark, he would slip quietly into a poor home and leave a little surprise on the hearth.”
“One story about St. Nicholas tells how he helped a poor nobleman who had lost both his wife and his fortune. This man had three daughters and he was worried about their finding husbands because he had no money to give them for a marriage dowry. In those days a girl without a dowry to set up housekeeping was just out of luck.”
“Saint Nicholas, who lived in the same town as the nobleman and was accustomed to dispense his large fortune in gifts of charity, resolved to rescue the young women. As he approached their house, wondering how he should proceed, the moon shone out and displayed an open window. Instantly St. Nicholas threw a purse of gold in at the window, which, falling at the feet of the father of the girls, enabled him to provide a dowry to his eldest daughter.”
“ The second time Saint Nicholas visited the house he also was able to throw a purse of gold through an open window, thus providing for the second daughter. On the third visit the father, watching for his benefactor, cast himself at the feet of the saint and cried, ‘Oh, St. Nicholas, servant of God, why seek to hide thyself?’
“The saint made the father promise not to reveal his gift-giving. From this habit of bestowing gifts in secret and under the cloak of night arose the practice of putting out stockings (or shoes) for the younger members of the family, so that the good saint would be able to fill them without being seen.”
“At one time it was the custom for young women pupils in convents on Christmas Eve to hang their new stockings on the door of the apartment of the abbess. They would also write notes calling the attention of the good St. Nicholas to their stockings. In the morning, when the convent pupils who had not gone home for the holidays arose, they invariably found their stockings filled with sweetmeats.”
“In the present day, when everyone seems to want credit for charity (and income tax receipts for their gifts) it is well to remember St. Nicholas and his gift-giving in secret. We know him as ‘the children’s saint’ because so often his presents were for little folk. St. Nicholas died 8 December 386 A.D.”