Christmas Traditions—Paper Bag Stockings

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

The tradition of the Christmas stocking has been around for thousands of years and has ties back to dozens of countries. I loved reading a little more about the background. In Holland, children received goodies in their clogs from "Sinterclass." Or there's the story that Saint Nicolas secretly left a little gold in the stockings drying by a fireplace of a family whose mother just died.

Still others say in North America the traditional Christmas stocking actually dates back to the end of the XIXth Century. Some believe the first mention of Christmas stockings being hung from a chimney were by Thomas Nast, an illustrator, thr ough his pictures and by the writer, George Webster, in a story about a visit from Santa Claus.

Well, in the Salisbury family, our Christmas stocking tradition revolves around brown paper bags.

OK it might not SEEM very exciting, and I remember several times growing up wondering why we couldn't have the fancy, cool looking stockings like everyone else.

It all comes from our mom's family. They had nine kids and apparently their stockings could never last. Our Grandma Minnie would make stockings and somehow they'd always get ruined and sticky from the special candy dropped inside each year. So one year she looked at what they had and decided to just use some lunch sacks. And it worked. They started out simple, maybe with just each person's name. Maybe they'd write a letter to Santa on it or draw a picture. And over the years, people got more creative, adding color, glitter, wrapping paper, glue and more.

Now every Christmas Eve, our family pulls out a package of lunch sacks and proceeds to get crafty decorating our "stockings" for that year. Sometimes we take more time, sometimes we take less. Sometimes we have to use more than one bag each because the first try simply wasn't good enough. When everyone is done, we line the bags up in birth order.

One of Jules' simple but glittery designs.

Everyone on Christmas morning showing off our stockings. I especially liked mine this year: see the tree branch border (back left)?

Another year: KK and Toots displaying the front and back of our stockings. Don't judge us from these early morning pictures!!