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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

ADVENT CALENDAR: STOCKING STUFFERS 2012

 ((First posted in 2007. I've added a bit to this that is in italics))



It’s been a long time since the last time my Christmas stocking
was hung up for Santa.

When I was small we didn’t have a fireplace so I’m not sure
where we hung them. Perhaps stuck to a doorframe with
thumbtacks? Although one year we had a cardboard red brick
light-up fireplace that I hadn’t thought about in years until just
now. And on Capen St. in Dorchester I think we hung them on
the “windowsill” of the wall mural my Dad made. Mom picked
out some large picture of Cypress Gardens and it was hung on
the wall, framed by a wooden  picture window frame so it
looked as if you were looking out at all those flowers! ((Dad
even wired it with a lightbulb inside the frame to light it up
at night. This worked well until the plastic model of a bird
I'd placed on the sill fell in and melted against the lightbulb.))



The house in Abington had a real fireplace (and a real picture
window) so the stockings were hung by the chimney, etc. and a
new one was added for my kid brother. A year or so after that
we hung one for the pets as well. But over the years as we
moved one place or another there would be Christmases where
no stockings were hung at all because we couldn’t figure out which
box they’d been packed away in during the last move. 



As for what was inside, as I mentioned once before there was
one year I got a lump of coal, but for the most part it would be
candy canes and an orange or apple. One year there was the new
wristwatch my folks bought me.


I’m not sure where those stockings are these days. My best guess
is that they are downstairs in my storage bin packed away with
the few Christmas tree ornaments that have survived!


Update 2010: The Christmas stockings and those few old
Christmas ornaments have gone to the great storage bin in the sky
during my latest move.

1 comment:

Celia Lewis said...

Ohhhhh someone needs to do a stocking for you, Bill. It is so much fun to go through a stocking as an adult... an orange, maybe a chocolate or candy, a candy cane, a book or comic to read, a puzzle to do before breakfast, and something surprising as well. Start a new tradition. Cheers.