It’s always an exciting moment to wake up on Christmas Day and see your Christmas stocking filled with festive presents and treats. But where did the age-old tradition come from?
Sadly, there’s no official record, however, the most popular story is about a widowed father and his three daughters.
Struggling to make ends meet, the father was unable to buy presents for his three daughters. One Christmas, Santa Claus heard of the family’s troubles and saw that the girls had hung their stockings to dry. So he threw coins down the chimney to fill them.
Such a lovely story!
Another popular theory is that stocking-filling originated from the custom of children leaving their shoes outside on St Nicholas’s feast day (December 6).
When placing their shoes inside, kids used to fill them with hay for Santa’s donkey and overnight, St. Nick would have replace the hay with gold coins.
While we wouldn’t mind waking up to some coins in our slippers come Christmas Day, we'd settle for chocolate coins too, Santa!
MORE: WHY DO WE SEND CHRISTMAS CARDS?
(All images: Getty)
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