How Christmas Stockings Started
Nothing has a more significant meaning like the hanging of beautiful stockings over the fireplace mantle. Families have been exercising this tradition for many years. Even though these days, Christmas stockings are being used to hold precious small gifts, there is an actual legend that tells how Christmas stockings started.
The legend of the Christmas stockings started with a nobleman who was very rich and powerful but yet kind and gentle towards his fellow men. After the passing of his wife of a long and dreadful sickness, he was left with three daughters to raise on his own. They all felt grief and misery for quite some time after the passing of the wife and mother.
Some years later, this nobleman lost all his fortune and was forced to move his family out of their noble place to a peasant’s cottage where the three daughters had to learn to do their own cooking, sewing and cleaning. They lived a life of poverty. When his daughters were of age to marry, his heart was heavy with sorrow and he was extremely depressed knowing that they could never marry someone without some kind of substantial assets, money or property to give to the new husband’s family. One night, the three daughters had washed their clothes and hung their stockings over the fireplace to dry.