Why hang Christmas socks at Christmas？
Hanging Christmas stockings at Christmas is an indispensable custom for Christmas in European and American countries. On Christmas Eve, children will put a pair of Christmas stockings on the bedside. When they wake up the next day, they will receive Christmas gifts. It used to be a pair of big red socks, any size is fine, because Christmas stockings are used to hold gifts. So how did the custom of hanging Christmas stockings come from? It turns out that there is a moving story behind this.
A long time ago, there was a kind-hearted nobleman. His wife died of illness, leaving him and his three daughters behind. The nobleman tried many inventions and failed, but they also ran out of money, so they had to move to a farmhouse, and his daughters had to cook, sew and clean themselves.
A few years later, the daughters gradually reached the age of marriage, but the father became even more frustrated because he did not have the money to buy the dowry for his daughters.
One night, the daughters hung their stockings in front of the fireplace to dry after washing their clothes. After the saint Nicholas learned about their father’s situation, he came to their house that night.
He saw from the window that the family was asleep, and he also noticed the girls’ stockings. Immediately, he took out three small packets of gold from his pocket and threw them one by one from the chimney, just falling into the girls’ stockings. The next morning, the daughters woke up to find that their stockings were full of gold, enough for them to buy dowry.
The nobleman was able to see his daughters getting married and lived a happy life ever since.
Later, children all over the world inherited the tradition of hanging Christmas stockings. In some countries, children have other similar customs. For example, in France, children put their shoes by the fireplace and so on.
