Christmas tights

Like stockings but more

I was an adult when I learned there was a difference between a Christmas stocking and lingerie.

I don’t know if this is a Scottish thing, a working class thing, an east coast working class Scottish thing or just a thing my mum did.

Here she is cutting the legs off a pair of old tights on Christmas eve circa 1985.

To my mum, the cut-off leg of an old pair of tights is close enough to a stocking. Stuff it with Christmas presents, it’s a Christmas stocking.

Which is why, each Christmas night I would lie in wait, between waking and sleep, in giddy anticipation of . . .

. . . the cut-off leg of an old pair of tights stuffed with presents, laid like a glutinous snake at the end of my bed.

It was magical. The rustle of wrapping paper, the half visible toys, the glide of nylon on my skin as I slid my hand down to the foot, past the coin and the apple . .

. . . past the orange and the book, past the toys and trinkets, to the chocolate Santa I knew would be there.

In 1992 when my parents divorced, and my mum moved to her own flat, she stopped cutting the legs off her tights and instead . . .

. . . stuffed an entire pair of tights as full as she possibly could with Christmas presents. When she laid it on the end of the fold down sofa bed, it looked like a pair of grotesquely disfigured, disembodied legs. At thirteen years old I thought it was fucking hilarious. It was one of the best Christmas mornings in history. And yes, there were two chocolate Santas this time. One in each foot.

If any of you had the same Christmas stocking as me, I would dearly like to know, so please leave a comment. I have not yet met anyone, other than my sister, who thinks this is normal. My mum insists it is a Scottish thing. Her mum used to use her old stockings and she loved it. Although, when I pressed her about it the other day, she did doubt it a bit and conceded that it could just have been her family. I know it may sound weird to some, but it truly was magical.

Merry Christmas