Christmas and stockings an age old tradition

Christmas and stockings are two words forever bound together. They illustrate the magic and generosity of Christmas time. The tradition is an old one whose origins are lost in the mists of time but William Lee of Calverton, Nottinghamshire is the man who made it possible for us to hang up our modern stockings.

In 1589 he made the first breakthrough in stocking manufacture. It is said that he invented the stocking frame, a machine that knits stockings and socks for love.

One story has it that he invented it out of spite: having discovered his sweetheart preferred her knitting to his attentions, another suggests he invented it for his hard working wife who knitted stocking by hand to supplement their family income.

Stocking Frame at Ruddington
Framework Knitters' Museum

During the 18th century stocking frames quickly became the domain of men like weaving machines while the hand knitters remained primarily women. The English East Midlands, particularly in the towns of Nottingham and Leicester became the centre of stocking manufacture from the 18th century.

Tough, hand knitted
woollen blue stockings

Until the invention of nylon there were two types of stocking; the luxury ones and the utilitarian ones. Luxury stockings were made from imported silk, or the fine fibres of long-wooled sheep, on a machine by a male frame knitter in London or one of the East Midland towns. Utilitarian socks were hand-knitted, usually by poor women in the country and was made from the much coarser wool of the sheep of Westmorland, Wales, or Scotland.

Elegant, machine knitted French silk stockings

The frame-knitted silk stockings were costly
accessories worn by men and women of middling and upper rank. Without elastic they where held up by garters and ribbons. Thousands of pairs were exported and sold in the British colonies, which were bound by the mother country’s restrictions on manufacturing.
In 1767, Benjamin Franklin’s enterprising maidservant, Ann Hardy, made a reasonable second income selling socks and worsted stockings to Philadelphians from the supplies her British friends sent to her.

A racy pair of candy cane
Christmas stockings

There are no records to say when Europeans started to hang an empty stocking or sock by the fire in the hope of receiving a Christmas gift. Legend tells us that it began with a poor man who had three very beautiful daughters but no money for their dowries.

Saint Nicholas it is said heard of the man’s plight and wanted to help but knew the old man would not accept charity so he decided to help in secret. After dark, he threw three bags of gold through an open window into the house and one landed in a stocking. So the tradition of receiving gifts in stockings from a strange man under the cover of darkness was born – blimey it sounds positively saucy when put like that!

However, there is another possible origin for the practice. According to writer Phyllis Siefker, Scandinavian and German children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw, or sugar, near the chimney for Odin's flying horse. Odin would then reward them with gifts or sweets (candy). This practice, she claims, survived in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands after the adoption of Christianity and became associated with Saint Nicholas through Christianisation. Another possible source is the Grandmother cult in Bari, Italy where grandmothers would put gifts in stockings at Christmas. This too merged with the St. Nicholas tradition.

The modern Santa

Today the Christmas stocking tradition is going strong. In our family, we always hang our stockings up on Christmas Eve and wake on Christmas morning to find them filled with chocolate money, an orange, a walnut and a little toy. (I wonder which magical person does that?). Every family has its own Christmas traditions and special magical people who make them happen - is it you?




Sources: https://katedaviesdesigns.com/2014/05/05/a-brief-history-of-british-socks/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_stocking

Picture credits:
French Medium: silk, metallic Dimensions: Length: 23 in. (58.4 cm) Accession Number: C.I.55.52.1a, b The Metropolitan Mueseum of Art
http://anextraordinaryday.net/from-sweater-to-christmas-stocking-in-12-easy-steps/
https://www.smiffys.com/candy-stripe-thigh-high-stockings-red-and-white
http://www.southernsavers.com/stocking-stuffer-round-up-1219/
The Carol Burnett Show: The Family (Merry Christmas Mama) - 1974

What should you say in a love letter?

Anne-Catherine de Ligniville Helvétius
by Louis-Michel van Loo.

In 1779 Benjamin Franklin, when serving as the U.S. envoy to France, fell in love with Anne Catherine Helvétius, the widow of the Swiss-French philosopher, Claude-Adrien Helvétius. 

Nicknamed "Minette", she maintained a renowned salon in Paris using her dead husband’s accumulated wealth and among its habitués were France’s leading politicians, philosophers, writers and artists.

 In courting her attention, he sent her many letters expressing his love, admiration, and passion. 

In one, he claimed that he had dream that their dead spouses had married in heaven and that they should avenge their union by doing the same on earth! 

In another passionate plea, he wrote:

 “If that Lady likes to pass her Days with him, he in turn would like to pass his Nights with her; and as he has already given her many of his days…she appears ungrateful never to have given him a single one of her nights.”

Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago comes on strong when he writes to Lara saying; 

“Don't be upset. Don't listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element, something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.”

I think you'll agree that's powerful stuff but how would you feel if you got a letter like that? Would it please you or make you run a mile? I think I'd make a run for it. So what should you write to your love? Well if want to woo your love successfully science has some tips for you.

Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg’s theory of love, suggests that the ideal love letter should include the following components—intimacy, passion, and commitment. 

To test this hypothesis Donelson Forsyth and Kelli Taylor constructed a number of letters and asked people what they thought of them.

They discovered that, when it comes to love letters, commitment conquered all.

The letter that proclaimed, “I know we will be happy together for the rest of our lives” and “I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it,” was rated much higher, in terms of expressing love, than one that made no mention of commitment. 

Adding language that spoke of closeness and caring increased the letter’s good impression with readers, but it was commitment that left readers feeling loved and in love.

As to expressing passion in a letter; frisky letters, which went on for too long about the sender’s sexual passions, were viewed generally negatively by both genders; perhaps because they were more about lust than love. 

They also discovered that a message of commitment need not be delivered in a traditional love letter or a card; a simple email will do which is lucky as so many of us have lost the art of putting pen to paper. 

However, research shows that people think that letters are more trustworthy, and a hand written letter shows effort and care too. 

Therefore, if you want your love letter to get results you need to write it yourself, show your commitment to the relationship and put it in an envelope. Call me old fashioned but a bunch of flowers wouldn’t go amiss either.

For more see:

https://spsptalks.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/the-science-of-relationships/

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago