Why does St. Nicholas leave gifts in Christmas stockings? One legend says Nicholas, a benevolent bishop in Turkey, had heard that the daughters of a villager had no dowries and so could not marry. When Nicholas came to visit them at their home, he found wool stockings had been left out to dry. He secretly filled each stocking with enough gold coins to provide for the dowries of the daughters.
As kids, Sam, Pete, and I left our stockings out on Christmas Eve and found them full on Christmas morning. We would open the presents in our stockings before going to mass and then open the presents under the tree when we returned. Not being in need of dowries, our stockings were not filled with coins of gold. They were sometimes filled with fruit and often with candy and other goodies. I remember getting Life Saver storybooks, macadamia nuts, jelly beans and more. The stockings pictured here were crocheted by my Grandma Jean in the early 1970's and used for a number of years in our family.
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