The Weird Truth About Christmas Stockings

3.5 Years:

OH MY GOD. I just realized something. A stocking... is like a giant sock!

Small epiphanies are the spice of life, and, when you’re three years old, tiny epiphanies are everywhere. I was hanging Christmas stockings when this one sudden realization really hit my daughter, who was at that point somewhere between a toddler and a child. Who knew that a stocking and a sock could bear such similarity?

While no one’s sure if it’s apocryphal, legend has it that there’s a good, specific reason behind the use of Christmas stockings, and it relates to the real Saint Nick of medieval Turkey. Supposedly, there was a family with young daughters who were just past puberty, which, in that day, meant that they needed to be married off quickly or find an unpleasant and dangerous job. Their father was grieving that he couldn’t cover a dowry so his daughters could go to good husbands. He would have to sell them into prostitution.

That night, the girls washed and dried all of their clothes and hung their stockings (or just plain old socks, depending on the version of the story) to dry by the fire. Supposedly, after the entire family had gone to bed, Saint Nicholas crept into the house and left gifts of gold coins—enough for a dowry—in each of the girls’ socks. They were then married off to good husbands who treated them well.

The good deed was commemorated with Saint Nicholas’s Day, on December 6^th, but the commercialization and modernization of winter holidays combined it into what we now celebrate as Christmas.

I wanted to tell my daughter this story, when she noticed that stockings hung on a mantelpiece look remarkably like socks hung to dry by a fire. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a way to tell the tale in a way that censored the grim reality of dads paying men to take their daughters, to avoid working as prostitutes in the night. Maybe she’ll hear that story later, but three years old wasn’t the time for it.

Parasaurolophus at 3:00

3 Years:
“Um, Mother? I’m a tiny baby parasaurolophus who needs to sleep right next to her mama parasaurolophus in a tiny little nest-bed. And I need to snuggle next to my mama parasaurolophus in case there are troodons who want to eat me.”
“Are you saying you want to sleep in my bed?"

“Um… yes?”

It was 3:40 in the morning.

At 3:40 in the morning, absolutely nothing makes sense, even when it’s condensed into short, accessible words that an average kindergartener would know.

At 3:40 in the morning, I was forced to decode a long string of scientific words behind a paleontologically themed make-believe game that I hadn’t been privy to.

At 3:40 in the morning, I arrived at the most likely conclusion about what was being said, since there are only a few things that a three-year-old is likely to need at 3:40 a.m. It didn’t involve request for water or bathroom help, so it must have been a request to sleep in my bed.

It turned out I was right. I allowed it and, hours later, woke up to a snuggly little kid, who was still convinced that she was a baby parasaurolophus, in my arms.

Sometimes parenthood would be made simpler by a child whose imagination is less active and whose vocabulary is a little more limited, at least at 3:40 in the morning. But simpler parenthood isn’t always rewarding parenthood. I’m more than happy to have the kind of kid who will wake me up late at night with a string of hexasyllabic words and a request for cuddles.

Liopleurodon

3 Years: “I have a bunch of little toy extinct reptiles. I have… a Parasuarolophus, a Brachiosaurus, an Apatosaurus, a Compsugnathus, a Maiasaur, a Pterosaur, a Dimetrodon, and… OH MY GOD. I don’t have a toy Liopleurodon!” 

My daughter’s second-longest-lasting obsession was with dinosaurs. For the better part of a year, she lived and breathed dinosaurs, and it took only a month or two before her level of knowledge outpaced mine. She could tell a Chasmosaurus from a Triceratops, a Deinonychus from a Velociraptor, and a Stegoceras from a Micropachycephalosaurus. (The fact that she could say “Micropachycephalosuarus,” alone, was enough to amaze me.)

Of course, the thing that made this phase especially amusing and adorable was the number of scientific-sounding Latin syllables she blurted out in what was, to her, completely normal conversation. This one little gem of an observation arose when she was playing by herself and taking a census of the creatures in her toy collection. I ordered her a toy Liopleurodon that day, even though I first had to use Google to figure out what it was and how to spell it.

If a Carrot Could Talk

2.5 Years: “If a carrot had eyes and could talk… That would be really weird and kind of creepy.”

Child development experts often refer to the Why Phase in a toddler’s life, when every single statement, question, and command from an adult is met with a cute—if sometimes whiney— “But why?”

We’ve all been there and we’ve all heard it. Why do I have to go to bed? Why do I have to eat my broccoli? Why are you my mommy? Why does grass grow? Why do I ride in a car seat? Why do mommies have headaches all the time? Why do people get sick? Why do cats have whiskers? Why does Daddy have a beard? Why do dogs poop outside and not in toilets?

It’s enough to drive absolutely any parent insane. But often forgotten in the list of toddlers’ intellectual stages is what I call the If Phase—every bit as persistent, and every bit as bizarre, as the Why Phase. Like the Why Phase, the If Phase is how children, with their fast-growing little noggins, learn to link cause and effect and establish those first little connections of critical thinking.

The ifs are endless. If I were a grownup, I could drive a car. If I were a snake that ate an egg, I would be shaped like an oval. If I ate too many cookies, I would get a tummy ache. And if, by some disturbing accident of nature, a carrot had eyes and could talk, that would be really weird and kind of creepy.

And it would.