Bring back the stocking – it’s one of the best things about Christmas

Whatever happened to hanging a Christmas stocking “by the chimney with care,/ In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there”? A third of us have apparently abandoned the tradition entirely. Presumably stockings are not large enough to satisfy our expectations, which is a pity, for there is nothing quite like a sockful of surprises to cast magic over Christmas morning. Retrieving a box from under the tree has nothing on the excitement of finding a stocking bulging with a dozen little shapes to squeeze and decipher.

And the stocking’s demise is all the more puzzling given that half of us profess to be so concerned about waste that we would be pleased to receive our presents unwrapped this Christmas.

Let this, then, be the year we bring back the stocking. Not only is it more environmentally friendly than unrecyclable glitter-laden wrapping paper, but it’s a link to the magic and mystery of Christmases long past.

Already popular when the Victorians lavishly covered their Christmas presents in paper, the stocking may have originated with the Dutch, Spanish, Germans, or Italians, or perhaps been born in New York.

In her new biography of Christmas, Judith Flanders suggests that Christmas stockings may in fact have been the idea of Washington Irving, who in 1809 amusingly described their hanging as a “pious ceremony, still religiously observed in all our ancient families of the right breed”.

Irving was a member of the New York Historical Society, which was founded in 1804 by John Pintard, another contender, according to Flanders, for the originator of the present-filled stocking. It was Pintard’s friend, Clement Clarke Moore, who went on to claim authorship of the “’Twas the night before Christmas” poem, A Visit from St Nicholas.

With its imagery of stockings hanging neatly over the fire, the poem captures perfectly the sense of warmth and cosiness we covet most in this season.

There is nothing brash or extravagant about a stocking. It is the very picture of comfort – ideally suited to holding the kind of small, inexpensive toys that can bring us together on Christmas Day.

Christmas isn’t about presents, but it is a time for coming together in celebration.

And when one is stuffing turkeys with chestnuts, crackers with jokes, puddings with silver trinkets and stomachs with most of the above, then it seems ludicrous not to be stuffing stockings, too.

Buy one to last or, better still, make one. I shall be hanging up the same teddy-bear stocking I had as a baby. The most important Christmas traditions, after all, are the ones we make for ourselves.