On the feast day of St. Nicholas, December 6, we remember his generousity by giving each other
gifts and chocolate gold coins in our stockings.
And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The custom of hanging Christmas stockings goes back to the 4th-century when St. Nicholas was a bishop of the Church. One of the most famous stories about his life tells of a poor man who was unable to provide dowries for his three daughters. If he couldn't get them married, he'd have to sell them into slavery (such was the culture at the time). Hearing of the family's predicament, Nicholas took a stocking full of gold, enough for a dowry, and tossed it into the family's house through the window. He repeated his anonymous gift for each of the daughters, enabling the girls to marry.
