Please explain what I do with Christmas stockings as I’d like to start the tradition

[Confusedstocking]

I often see chats about them but don’t understand. As a child I’d be given a shop bought netty stocking with chocolate bars held in place, as the backing was cardboard with a puzzle. Asking DH AND HE SAID they just got an orange or something in theirs. Showing our age!

I made stockings years ago but just hang them up. Not much room in them but what do people do? Buy little presents, wrap them up individually and stuff them in the stockings to be opened before the main presents or are they left on the ends of beds or door handles? Please explain to someone who really doesn’t know and in pictures only sees them hung at fireplaces but wants to build Christmassy family traditions. TIA

Ha ha- you’re opening a massive can of worms here because people do lots of different things. In our house stockings are from “Santa” and it’s a pillow case filled with little presents ( mine are teens so shower gel, body sprays, chocolates, mobile phone case, underwear, that sort of stuff). No requests. It’s left in their room for them to find on Christmas morning. They can open it when they wake up. Then they get main presents from family later.

BUT some families say all presents, including the big presents are from santa and the kids wrote to Santa asking for certain things. My friend does this so Santa would leave her main present on her bed. And then the little things are done later.

Other families don’t do Santa at all.

so basically so what works for you.

For my DS I used to put in small little presents and quite a lot of chocolate and maybe a book.

Decide first if you are going to put in bedrooms. If you are buy two of the same stocking for each child. One to hang in The bedrooom and one for you to be able to fill quietly outside the room and just quickly swap once children are asleep. (A tip I read on here many years ago)

I never wrapped what went in stockings but I know others do.

We have stockings. Not huge or pillow case sized. They are left by the fire on Christmas Eve, then brought upstairs in the morning to open on the bed. Father Christmas does stockings (even for late teens/adults!), all other present are from the giver and are under the tree. Generally presents only appear under the tree on Christmas Eve after everyone has gone to bed.

Horses for courses, OP. Every family has its traditions.

Ours are smaller gifts in stockings - an orange, a toblerone, a net bag of little chocolate Father Christmases, a book, silly Christmas socks, a new toothbrush and some bubble bath or similar.

DH's family have them at the end of the bed and can be opened by the children on their own, to keep them quiet busy for longer so their parents got a lie in.

My family had them downstairs on the hearth and no one could open anything until everyone was awake and my Mum had a cup of tea (most important bit!).

So I do small (fairly non expensive gifts) plus fluffy socks, new toothbrush, small game or puzzle with a chocolate Santa and tube of sweets.

I wait for dd to go to sleep and fill it up so when she wakes up she can see it's full (I still do this and she's 17 now 😂)

All the gifts under the tree are from whoever they are from (not Father Christmas.)

Ooh I love a Christmas stocking. Personally I prefer the knitted ones that become jagged and squishy when there are gifts inside.

I usually fill them up with little gifts of no more that £6 or £7

So for example for my children this year I have bought.

Chocolate Santa or coins
Fluffy bed socks
Paperback book
A mascara (for my teen DD)
Pokémon cards for my son
Fidget toy
And ofcourse an orange

I forgot to mention;
Ours get hung on the bedroom door and we open them on our bed together xmas morning

I think you’ll get a variety of answers to this one but in our house we made a thing of leaving out a mince pie and drink for Father Christmas (helped the children to do it themselves) and left it on the hall table. The children then left the empty stockings outside their bedroom doors when they went to bed and we read them a Christmassy bedtime story.

They had a time they were allowed to get up on Christmas morning (usually really early but not 4am early, which it would have been without any rule!) and would grab their full stockings from outside their bedrooms and bring them into our room to open whilst sat on the end of our bed. We watched them open the individually wrapped stocking gifts with bleary eyes and a cup of tea.

In terms of contents, our stockings included things like chocolate, a yo yo, fidget toy, a book, mini Lego set etc.

I don't remember where I saw this but a good formula for a stocking is "something you want, something you need, something to eat and something to read"

Same here, it wasn't really a thing for me and DH growing up either but I do them now and have been for 15 years.

Key points:
The tradition honors St. Nicholas who would sneak up to clothes lines and leave money in the stockings of impoverished women.

As this is the 'true' story it honors the tradition is to include money, some people still do a shiny coin but most people use chocolate coins now (most supermarkets sell a net bag for approx. £1).

For some reason (I do not know the true origin) it has become tradition to include fruit, commonly oranges... this is often switched for terrys chocolate oranges now a days.

Nuts where also traditional, this does not seem as popular or done any more.

On top of that you can do ANYTHING you want, people on mumsnet have strong varying opinions (like weather £50 perfume is a stocking filler or if you should include necessities like pants/socks/toothbrush) so there is no right or wrong.

In our the kids get:

• a sheet of stickers
• 4 toys/novelties
• a game to share
• 3x sweets
• biscuits
• chocolate coins
• a chocolate orange

Little things to open when they woke up, in bedroom (hanging from the end of the bed). You select a longish, ‘roomy’ sock, they hang up on Christmas Eve at bedtime. You have kept, without them noticing, it’s sock-mate, which you fill and then sneak in their room to change with the empty one, when they have gone to sleep, without waking them up - adds a high degree of peril to your frantic Christmas Eve preparations.
I included a sandwich, biscuit and small carton of juice , in the hopes they would stay in bed a little bit longer if they weren’t hungry or thirsty 😂.

We have the stockings downstairs hung on door handles as they are hard to hang from the fireplace.

We do not wrap gifts and they are not from Santa (just a tradition in memory of St. Nick).

I don't have time or inclination to be sneaking into our kids bedrooms lol.

We do not open them in the morning and as soon as the kids are up we get up.

We never had stockings either as kids, just the pillowcase!
Each of us has a special stocking. Up until Christmas they just hang up in lounge but on Christmas Eve they are hung on bedroom doors or mantelpiece.
Fill with small presents and sweets/treats. Grownups might get a book, CD, stationery, toiletries, chocolates, fudge.
Sometimes I shop for my own stocking fillers so I can choose my own treats. The year I got them all from John Lewis was a great one. Otherwise DH and I do each others stockings and of course the kids ones.
Presents are mostly wrapped but there are no gift tags.
We have two DS's close in age so to avoid arguments their stockings are usually nearly identical in contents. They are teens now but showing no sign of being too grown up for Christmas stockings!

Father Christmas brings the stocking here. My advice, do not buy big ones!! Fill with chocolate coins, treats like small toy, small lego, puzzles , bath stuff, Christmas socks etc. leave by the end of the bed or as we do by the fire and Father Christmas fills them up! Dc say they are the best bit of Christmas.

Don't waste your time wrapping stocking presents. Part of the fun is rummaging around the stocking in the half dark trying to work out what's in there.

Put things in which will get eaten or used in some way. Jokey books and games end up adding to general clutter.

We've always done presents under the tree opened as a family and stockings on beds to wake up to.

ps I've never had my own stocking, ever, but I do enjoy doing them for the resident ingrates

Every family has different traditions, obviously. Instead of any type of ‘stocking’ we tend to use either pillowcases or a good strong, large gift bag, decorated with Christmassy ornamentation and oddments.

There’s a useful rhyme, that I’ve forgotten, but it essentially suggests stocking presents should cover something to read, eat, wear, play with. Some of us lean towards exclusively edible stocking presents, I like a range including alcohol, a non-alcoholic drink, something small and useful, a magazine or book, a small accessory, soap, plus a few edible things. Maybe one ridiculous or amusing thing. But absolutely no ‘tat’.

Have to say, in general I love putting stockings together even more than main presents. I wrap things, but the wrapping can be a bit haphazard / quirky. Everyone in the family gets one - so there’s likely to be some collaboration if we’re spending Christmas together. There’s a fair bit of creeping around overnight to hang them outside bedroom doors. And then people open them as soon as they wake up in the morning.

Small things in stockings like a satsuma, felt tip pens, socks, a small book, tube of Smarties, a little puzzle, toy car, small dinosaur, bracelet etc. Just enough to keep them occupied when they wake up!

I echo the idea of having two stockings if you are doing them in the bedroom, the empty decoy to put at the end of the bed and the full one so you can really quickly do a switch after they've gone to sleep.

We have 4 stockings - one for each of us (3) and one for grandparents to share. Santa fills them with tiny little treats - sweets, socks, bath bombs, tiny dolls or puzzles, vouchers - anything small that would cheer someone up but is not considered part of the 'big Santa gifts' under the tree. We do stockings in the afternoon, when big gifts glitter wears off a bit (DD is only 4).

Growing up our mum used old tights of hers that were cut into two, and very stretchy! She got us to write a Christmas list each year and they were enveloped up and put on the mantlepiece to "fly up the chimney to Santa overnight". We would put our tights stockings at the end of our bed and Santa would fill them when we were pretending to be asleep and anything too big would be placed at our feet. We also would be given a main present from or parents from our list on Christmas day (if we'd asked for things they could get us). Non-negotiable stocking contents were chocolate coins, a bright red apple and a Satsuma.

Dd (5) has a small sack, a little smaller than a pillowcase. Gifts in there are from Father Christmas and are smaller ones chosen to keep her busy before the main gift opening. These are things like a soft toy, books, fancy notebook, lol surprise ball. We also put in a couple of things that go with the main gift like a Barbie and then new knickers/socks/vests. She later has one main gift under the tree and that is also from FC.

We have fairly small Christmas stockings, big enough for an orange, chocolate coins and three or four small items. I wrap some but not all. We started hanging stockings at the end of beds because that’s how it was when I was a child, but as other posters have said, this becomes harder as they get older so we now leave them by the fireplace (and if I had young children now I would do this from the beginning). Mine are teens now but they still like them and I give them things like socks, lip balm, toiletries, makeup, books. Boys are harder to buy stocking presents for as teens! Go ahead and do whatever works for you and it will become your own and your kids’ Christmas tradition :-)

Small gifts- the only ones from Father Christmas- put on the end of their beds in the night. Kept them quiet when they were small and gave them something to rip open first thing and play with until everyone has had a shower, got dressed, has breakfast, put the turkey in etc. They still bring them into our room to open!

Then the main gifts are opened slowly and calmly and the actual giver can be thanked.

In my home DC used to hang up their stockings (sacks) at the bottom of Xmas tree. The big present comes from DH and me and is wrapped and put under the tree separately. The other gifts get wrapped up in Xmas paper for each DC and put into their sacks/stockings. DH and I get a stocking too. We all open stockings after breakfast and open the big presents after the Kings speech. When DC were younger we opened them all early in the morning.

Agree that there's no set formula so just do what works for you.

Here, DC (7 and 5) hang up their stockings downstairs on Christmas Eve, then they open those before breakfast (we all go down together), then 'big' presents after breakfast.

I wrap the stocking fillers in tissue paper (different colour for each child) because I think unwrapping is part of the fun (and also prolongs it!).

They have different things each year, but will usually include:

A small paperback book (eg a joke book, fact book, iSpy book, this year a fiction one for DC1)
Smiggle keychain/pens/fidget toy
Bath bomb
Chocolate coins
Card game (eg Top Trumps, Sussed)
A few small toys (this year a miniverse make it mini food blind ball, small Playmobil - the 'special ' sets, tiny Ty teddy, robo alive turtle, Hexbug nano)
Glow in the dark stars

This year have also got a Smart Games mini set for DC2 and a rubix cube for DC1.

Mine have socks, a tube of chocolate, a chocolate orange, a satsuma and some candy canes in theirs. When they were younger I'd put small toys in. I wrap the presents, even though they know now what's in them.

They are hung on the mantelpiece (after once laying them on their beds and DS1 waking his brothers excitedly at 1am and none of them going back to sleep I didn't do that again!) and they open them as soon as we're all up.

Then we have breakfast and open the rest of the presents.

I've always told my kids that Father Christmas delivers the presents but we still have to pay for them - that way they didn't wonder why FC didn't bring them whatever hugely expensive present they asked for (although to be fair they never did ask for anything extravagant)