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The Story of Christmas Stockings
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The story of Christmas stockings has seen several versions, cutting across time, age and distance. Today Christmas is incomplete till children do not keep their stockings next to the fireplace, or any place else, in the hope of getting small gifts from Santa Claus. According to popular folklore, a child gets goodies if he has been good through out the year, and gets only a piece of coal, if not.
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The more popular version of the Story of Christmas Stockings revolves around a kind old man, who had recently lost his wife and was left with three daughters. Moreover, he had lost all his money. Consequently, he constantly worried for his daughters, as he feared that no body would marry them with no money for dowries and even to organize the wedding. One day, St. Nicholas who was passing by the village overheard this situation and decided to help the family. In the night, when all had fallen asleep, he crept on to this old man's house chimney and threw in three bags of gold coins. Each fell inside a stocking that the daughters had earlier washed. The old man could thus arrange for his daughters' marriages with this mysteriously placed gold in the stockings. Seeing this, other people in the village too placed their stockings near the fireplace.
Since then, it has become not only a custom, but the practice itself has seen several changes with time. What began in Germany, the custom of Christmas stockings has today become quite commercialized. The stocking practice was mentioned first in Clement Clark Moore's famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”. Thus the lines read, “The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.”
The story of Christmas Stockings is today an important part of the folklore and popular cultures, all around the world. It might have seen changes, but for children all round the globe, it remains an integral and fun activity for the night of Christmas eve.
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