Advent - day four

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, four Christmas stockings, three special wishes, 2 roller skates, and one very large kelp.

Christmas stockings meant something very different in the Clayton household. I think I was married before I realized that most people had a specific Christmas stocking, not one of their dad's old work socks!!

The way it worked was you went and got one of Dad's work socks and pinned it to a spot on the couch or one of the overstuffed chairs. You wrote your name on a piece of paper and pinned that to the sock. The next morning, your stocking was stuffed and your gifts were stacked up next to it. Sometimes a sheet of tissue paper was draped over your gifts - to add a bit of mystery!!

I know that at one point, I wished that the gifts could be wrapped and piled under the tree. But after years of staying up late myself on Christmas Eve wrapping gifts, I understand completely why parents with 12 children would not do that for very long!!

The stockings always had the same contents: an orange, an apple, a banana, walnuts, filberts, peanuts, Life-Savers, a new box of crayons if you were a kid, and some Viviane Woodard cosmetics and toiletries if you were a female teen or above!

There is comfort in consistency!! And happy memories too!