Gogi's Christmas Stockings

First published in Mothers Always Write

“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care” go the words of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem about Santa Claus, and so go our actions as we lovingly hang our handmade stockings on the mantel each year and reverently remember my grandmother, whose nickname was Gogi. She gave us one of our most cherished Christmas traditions – the hanging of the Christmas stockings. Wrapped in tissue paper for safekeeping, the hand knit stockings are kept in the hall closet in a box covered with images of Santa. Each year, we carefully take down the box, unwrap the tissue paper, and hand each child his or her stocking to place on the mantel.

Hanging down from their prominent perch, the eight stockings with each person’s name knit across the open end of the sock, warm the hearts of family just as the hearth below them warms the home.   The delightful stockings bring back wonderful memories of the shy yet industrious woman who lovingly and patiently made them with her slender hands, having learned how to knit when she was a young girl helping her mother and other women make hats, scarves and mittens for World War I soldiers.

            According to family lore, my grandmother Gogi found a pattern for a Christmas stocking featuring Santa Claus that she loved but she altered it slightly to make it even more to her liking. This became the pattern that she used to knit stockings for her grandchildren and then the spouses of those grandchildren. Her nimble fingers stitched together beautiful stockings as family memories were stitched together over time. As each new great-grandchild was born, Gogi excitedly pulled out her knitting pattern and created yet another beautiful stocking for the baby of her large and expanding family, expertly adding another name to the new sock and to the family genealogy. 

            Prominent on each stocking was Santa Claus and my grandmother seemed to use Clement C. Moore’s description in the poem as a guide, for indeed, her hand-stitched Santa had “cheeks like roses and a nose like a cherry.”  “The right jolly old elf” on the stockings appeared “chubby and plump” with a long beard made from white fuzzy material.

As my grandmother aged, her fingers became less nimble and her eyes less keen. The Santa on her stockings took on a different shape, often not as chubby and plump. The Santa faces on the stockings in the later years became thinner and less defined in detail, and yet our lives were lovingly defined by our grandmother’s compassionate care and concern. Her presence graced our lives. Gogi shared “pearls of wisdom” as she patiently made “purl stitches” in knit dresses or skirts or scarves.  As an involved grandparent, she set the pattern for our lives as a wonderful role model.

            For years my Christmas stocking hung in my childhood home on the wind-whipped Nebraska prairie.  Then it hung beside the stocking Gogi knit for my husband in our tiny apartment near Duke University. Our first child’s stocking adorned the fireplace in San Diego, CA and after our son was born, four stockings hung in a small villa in Naples, Italy. Later, four additional ones hung in our house in Washington, D.C., America’s hometown.  Now all eight hang on the mantel in our Farmville home.

As the years unraveled in quick succession, the stockings traveled with us in our military life and adorned several different mantels. At Christmas time every year, as they are “hung by the chimney with care,” they are a steadfast reminder of home and family, and the grandmother who skillfully, patiently, and joyfully knit Christmas stockings, but more importantly, knit a family together with her love.