Christmas Traditions That Will Get You in the Holiday Spirit

Hanging stockings

This is another Christmas tradition with pre-Christian history. In Germany and Scandinavia, children would leave out their boots filled with sugar, carrots and straw for the Norse god Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir. This is probably where leaving out a snack for Santa and reindeers in the sky came from too.Anyway, this evolved into the practice of hanging stockings because over time it merged with the legend of Saint Nicholas – in Dutch he’s called Sinterklaas and in English, Santa Claus. The legend goes that one day, Saint Nicholas dropped three bags of gold down the chimney of a poor man who had no dowry for his daughters. The gold is still represented today, by an orange.