home + garden

In 1932 my mother made this giant Christmas stocking. The Depression was biting hard at my family. Two of my father’s brothers had moved into the small row house my parents rented, one with his wife and two small children. My dad supported them all as best he could. The two families each had one of two small bedrooms and the bachelor brother slept on a cot in the hallway. But they had a scrawny Christmas tree with gifts for everyone tucked under its meager branches. All the aunts and uncles and cousins and parents who were able to had brought gifts. The tree was decorated with paper cut-outs and bits of ribbon. My brother was the youngest child in the house, not yet two years old. And he was wildly excited to open the presents! So in the dark of Christmas morning well before anyone else was up, he slipped out of my parents’ bedroom, past his sleeping uncle and down the steps. He ripped opened the presents. Every one. Things he could play with he played with. He ate all the gifts of homemade candy. Clothes of any kind he just dropped and walked on. Homemade jam was opened, tasted and then dropped onto the floor with the clothes. It was a complete mess. With all the tags ripped off no one knew which gift was for which person, or who it was from. My mother was horrified and felt so bad that her child had destroyed, damaged or dirtied so many precious gifts. So the day after Christmas she marched into Kresge’s with a jar full of coins, determined to find something—anything—for each person under her roof. Kresge’s had their best cotton flannel on sale for 9 cents a yard. As my mother stood there fingering the lovely flannel she suddenly conceived the idea for a giant stocking. A stocking so big it could have held all the presents in safety. She decided to devote 50 cents to the stocking project and bought 4 yards of red flannel, 1 yard of white flannel and a spool of thread. That very day she sewed The Sock and every year since The Sock has been the centerpiece of our family Christmas, hanging from the ceiling in cheery splendor. Gifts that came in the mail, gifts we wrapped for each other, all gifts were dropped into the Christmas Sock. On Christmas morning my father would stand on an ottoman and unhook The Sock. We kids took turns pulling out a present and giving it to the proper recipient. As the baby of the family I always got to retrieve the final few gifts—by crawling right inside the sock! How indescribably magical it felt to be completely inside a giant Christmas Sock! My mother passed away in 1992. The Christmas Sock lives at my house now. Every year as I hang the sock I remember my beautiful mother. I touch the very stitches her hands created years before I was born. I remember a time when I had to reach up to touch the heel of the sock, and how after my father passed away I got to stand on the ottoman and unhook the sock for her. It’s a magic sock. Full of love even when it’s emptied. Martha Bennington