For as long as I can remember, one of my favorite parts of Christmas morning at my parents’ house has been reaching deep into my homemade red velvet stocking to find the small gifts contained within. When my sister and I were young, my parents filled all the stockings, but when I grew up, I joined in the fun of stuffing stockings, sneaking my contributions into the stockings when Mom, Dad and Melanie were busy elsewhere.
The Christmas that Paul and I were engaged, and Melanie’s boyfriend Lee seemed likely to join the family, she and I decided that they should have their own stockings at our parents’ house, and bought green velvet stockings for them. (We would have bought red, but couldn’t find plain red velvet stockings that year. We joked that red stockings were for family only, and they’d get theirs in due time.) After Melanie and Lee married, my mother had “family” stockings of red velvet made for both of her sons-in-law. Melanie and I moved the pins and trinkets from our husbands’ obsolete green stockings to their new red ones.
When Paul and I flew home to Seattle that year, I brought the green velvet stockings back with us. I thought that I’d redecorate them for us to hang from our mantel. In the eight years since, I haven’t touched them. Each of those years, Paul and I have spent Christmas in Houston, where red stockings marked with our names hang, waiting for us. I haven’t felt the need for us to have stockings here.
This year, Paul and I aren’t going to Houston for Christmas. For the first time, we’re staying is Seattle for the holidays. And since we’ll be waking up in our home on Christmas morning, it’s time that Paul and I have stockings to hang o’er our own chimney.
Tonight, I found the green velvet stockings, tucked away in a box in our basement. The red felt from which Lee and Paul’s names were cut was tucked inside one of them. As I clipped the threads holding Lee’s name to the second stocking, I remembered the day that Melanie and I shopped for that felt, and small gilt leaves, sequins and beads to match those on our and our parents’ stockings. I remembered carefully cutting out the names of the men we love, and stitching them onto the soft green velvet.
Tomorrow, I’ll sketch “Kimberly” in cursive on red felt, carefully clip around the letters of my name, then decide how best to orient it on the stocking. (My childhood stocking is marked “Kim”; the additional five letters that I use these days complicate things a bit.) Besides adding my name, I don’t know how we’ll decorate these green velvet stockings. The Christmas stockings at my parents’ house have evolved over time; I’m willing to let that happen with our stockings, too.
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On this day in…
2007: Day 6: Teach a man to cook a fish
2006: 6 (also about my family’s stockings)
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I still insist my mom put something in my stocking!
Santa would put them at the foot of our beds while we slept and we could open them before going downstairs on Christmas morning. Since my brothers and I would wake up at 6 am, this would give my parents a little more time to sleep in!
Shall I send you some decorations for your stockings? We have an abundance particularly for you.
This year Max decided he and Reed need larger stockings so I am in the process of making them. I have them stitched together and am now gathering decorations. The tops of the stockings are decorated with a portion of my old fox shrug (from my freshman year in college!). I fear that up close they look a bit like Grisabella in “Cats” but I think the boys will like the way it feels.
Love
Mom