Christmas special: Postcard Stockings galore! - Picture Postcard ...

Stockings Galore
Shapely, capacious, even darned -
Wendy Mann collects them all, provided
they’re on Christmas postcards
One record which doesn’t appear in any ‘Book of
Firsts’ concerns the first English child to receive a
Christmas stocking in this country. The social historian
John Pimlott remarked in his 1978 ‘The Englishman’s
Christmas’ that we shall never know just when
and where the first English stocking was filled. In
‘The English Year’ (2006) Steve Roud agreed: “The
Christmas sstocking iis oone oof sseveral eelements oof tthe
modern CChristmas tthat sstill ppuzzles tthe hhistoorian, aas
it iis nnot aat aall cclear eexactly wwhen oor hhow iit ccame iinto
vogue iin BBritain”. Brewer’s ‘Dictionary of Phrase and
Fable’ reckons it was around 1840, saying the custom
came from Germany. But whenever it was and
whatever the circumstances, it couldn’t have been
any more satisfactory than my first remembered
stocking - the largest of my father’s I could find,
hand-knitted by my grannie, and wonderfully and
reassuringly stretchy.
(left) My first remembered
stocking was borrowed
from my father and looked
something like this. Handknitted
by my grannie, it
was wonderfully and reassuringly
stretchy. A Rotary
RP postcard.
(right) An Agnes Richardson
design from Photochrom
in their
‘Celesque’ Series. Posted
1920. I have in my wider
collection a 1908 letter
written to Santa by an 11
year old American girl. She’d also have needed a
large stocking for her 28 requests. Amongst them and with
sometimes creative spelling, she wrote that she’d like a
muff and fur, a sailor suit and - hedging her bets - a big doll
or a small one with a coach to put it on.
That lucky first youngster
maybe - just maybe - had
associations with the royal
household. However, my
tentative suggestion, as
someone who enjoyed a
number of Christmas
stockings in Oldham, is
that the first national
stocking may have been
hung up close to my old
home. After all, German
merchants had nostalgically
taken Christmas trees
to Manchester at least as
far back as 1822 which is
the earliest non-Court
related reference I can find
and they may also, in
time, have introduced the
European stocking cus-
tom. It would seem logical
that this lovely concept
might then have been
copied by a small Mancunian
friend of a German
child resident in the city.
Early Court references
focused on gifts being laid
around trees and probably
in regal and aristocratic
circles the humble stocking
would have been considered
a poor tool compared
with the glorious
Christmas trees of the
truly privileged young.
Much is conjecture and
any self-respecting compiler
of records would rightly
regard my notion as woolly
and unsubstantiated but I
30 Picture Postcard Monthly December 2009
like the idea and shall
stick with it! And just as
personal example and
word of mouth were likely
to have played a part
so too must have books.
Serious stocking filling
began to gather momentum
earlier in the States than in
England due to the changing
nature of the gift nearer
there. On that side of the
Atlantic Washington Irving’s
Christmas figure in his
satirical ‘History of New
York’ appeared in 1809. Still
called St. Nicholas, he was,
however, most unsaintlike
and rode ‘jollily’ over the
rooftops in a wagon dropping
presents down chimneys.
He was followed in
1821 by a Santa and his
reindeer. This was in a
In America in the 1870s
there was some debate
about the relative merits of
trees and stockings. It wasn’t
taken for granted in families
with small children that
they should necessarily
have both. An embossed
American postcard
designed by Ellen Clapsaddle.
Publisher unknown and
postally used 1910.
poem in the lengthily-titled
annual ‘The Children’s
Friend, A New Year’s Present
to the Little Ones from
Five to Twelve’ which also
(left) This child about to discover
the surprises in two
full stockings is rather reminiscent
of those Victorian
cake decorations called
Snow Babies. An embossed
postcard with a PP imprint.
At the time
of Prince Albert’s influence
and earlier very privileged
English youngsters had
such toy-bedecked Christmas
trees stockings might
have seemed superfluous.
They’d have been grander
than this small version
about to be taken indoors
but it’s an attractive image
from Ethel Parkinson on a
postcard from C.W. Faulkner.
Postally used 1905.
included an early colour
lithograph of Santa. And the
following year saw the
appearance of ‘the right
jolly old elf’ of ‘Twas the
night before Christmas’
fame, again with reindeer.
This trio showed Dutch
influence as did New York
itself having been named
New Amsterdam by the
early Dutch settlers. However,
not only had they shed
their ecclesiastical past in
terms of appearance but
they were also beginning to
share a new characteristic
and that was a jovial personality.
It’s true there
could still be a dark side as
in ‘The Children’s Friend’
poem where if Santa found
“the children naughty, in
manners rude, in tempers
haughty... [he] left a long,
black birchen rod......”
expecting it to be used. But
in spite of this injunction he
was a largely amiable fellow
in his increasingly
numerous portrayals and
his friendliness and
approachability increased
with the years although, as
Santa/Father Christmas
postcards collectors will
know, he was slow to completely
relinquish his birch
rod. The stockings themselves
go back, of course, to