Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Christmas Stockings

Christmas Stockings. They're brilliant things because we were always allowed to open the gifts in our stockings before waking the parents up. After one year when my brother woke them up at 4am (and me at 3am....) they brought in their "Do NOT wake us up before 7am" rule, which was all right for them but I still got woken up by the brother whenever he wanted to wake me up.


My mum made our stockings, they are both made out of a fleecy material; Ian's is blue with a letter I stuck on and mine is pink with a C stuck on and a fairy too. And yes we do wear them before we put them out. We don't hang them on the fire-place, oh no sir-ee we used to put them at the end of the bed but now they go outside the bedroom door for "Santa" to fill when he gets back from the pub. 


Normally now we're both a bit older (I'm 28 and my brother's 26) he tends to be hungover on Christmas morning so it's me waking him up via banging on the wall between our rooms. His head is in just the right place! Once I've woken him up we go back into my room with our stockings and sit on my bed whilst we tear through the wrapping on our stocking fillers. There is always, without fail a chocolate orange and a pair of headphones in our stockings. There is also a packet of chocolate coins, a jelly lolly, an apple and an orange. Ian and I swap the apple for an orange because I don't eat apples and Ian doesn't eat satsuma's (you  think Santa would remember this!)


Then we wake the folks up, mum always has a shower as we bounce around the landing yelling for her to hurry up. When she finally gets out the shower we all go downstairs. We open the rest of our gifts, mum makes everyone bacon butties with a cup of tea and my dad takes photo's of us.


That is how it's been for the last 27 years, except this year I'm not going to be at home for Christmas so I'm not going to have a stocking. I'm spending this Christmas with my boyfriend and his family. I'm probably too old for it now anyway.