Hanging our Stocking by the Chimney with Care

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My daddy loved Christmas. He loved the tree, the goodies, cards, and giving gifts. Mama loved Christmas, too. Her role was expressed mainly in the kitchen where she started making goodies the day after Thanksgiving, squirreling them away in the pantry until Christmas Eve. If company dropped by before Christmas, as they often did, she served them cookies or date nut bread with coffee.

Gift giving is where Daddy excelled the most. Shopping for Mama, usually via his Sears and Roebuck account, was serious business for him. One year he bought her a whole wardrobe. I remember the two-piece outfit, a blue skirt and blue and black plaid jacket. I have a photo of her hugging Daddy with the outfit in her hand. It’s double exposed making it look my Mama had tinsel in her hair. And jewelry; he always gave her jewelry. One year a watch, another a gold ingot pendant.

Mama wasn’t the only one he shopped for. I always got a gift picked out by Daddy, even after I was grown and married. That sometimes threw a monkey wrench in Mama’s careful shopping, making sure she gave my sister and me, and later the grandchildren, equal gifts.

Daddy took his role as Santa Clause very seriously. The assembly of Santa gifts – like the tin doll house I got one year, kept him, and Mama, up well past midnight. Even after having stayed up late to “help” Santa, they never complained or sent us back to bed when we got up at the crack of dawn to see what Santa had put under the tree.

I think Daddy’s zest for gift-giving came from his childhood memories of Christmases during the Depression Era when gifts were meager. He told us that the only thing in each of their stockings was one orange and one piece of ribbon candy. I am sure that’s why on our Christmas Eves Mama put out a big bowl of fruit and a candy dish FULL of ribbon candy. That was in addition to her homemade goodies - those cookies and candies she started making right after Thanksgiving.

One year Daddy decided that our Christmas stockings were too small. So, he went to Roses Five and Dime and bought a pair of women’s brown support stockings. On Christmas Eve he hung them on the wall behind the Siegler oil heater that warmed our apartment. We had no fireplace. He chuckled and said something like, “Bet Ole Santa Claus never saw stockings like these!”

Even before Santa filled them, they were twice as long as our old colorful Christmasy ones. The thing that tickled Daddy the most was that the more Santa put in the stockings the longer they stretched. Mama had to get extra fruit to help fill the stockings. Because I loved olives, Santa always gave me a whole jar. The weight of the jar of olives stretched my stocking even longer. I don’t remember what else filled my and my sister’s stockings so much as I remember the fun of emptying them right down to the hazel nuts in the toes. It seemed to take forever, and Daddy did a wonderful job of feigning surprise and amazement at what that “ole scoundrel, Santa” managed to stuff into our stretched-out stockings!



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