christmas stockings

I learned today for certain...although I was always suspecious of it...that Germans don't have the Christmas stocking tradition.

A couple of friends were over this afternoon and saw our stockings hanging up. They were aware of Christmas stockings but weren't exactly sure what they were for. I got to explain to them that they were filled with candy and nuts and small gifts and toys on Christmas Eve and opened Christmas morning.



I made our stockings myself for our first Christmas after we were married. When we first got married we didn't have much in the way of Christmas decorations and I ended up hand-making a lot of decorations that year. I had intended that most of what I was making would only be used for a year or two until we could collect more. But most of what I made have became some of our favorites to pull out every year. And our stockings are one of them.



I got the pattern from good ol' reliable Martha which you can find here (I just didn't add the birds). I didn't yet have a sewing machine at the time so I sewed each one by hand. It didn't really take very long but I like that our stockings have that hand-touched quality. Plus, I have memories of working on them over the course of a few nights, sitting on the sofa with a needle and thread and Christmas movies.