“Great Stocking Stuffer” written across the sale inserts in my newspaper. There are gadgets galore, trinkets and every kind of novelty candies you can think of in today’s flyer. I notice that every year the stocking stuffer items become larger and larger until the stockings need to be replaced with Santa “Sacks”

It has been hard for me to get used to the whole stocking stuffer chaos. Things that are placed in stockings now, would have been one of my major Christmas gifts growing up. Times sure have changed.

My brother and I would always get to open our gifts on Christmas Eve except for one that we would choose to save for Christmas morning. Milk and cookies were the last thing we would do before being made to go to bed…sometimes we would write Santa a note.

Early rising was the usual ritual, we had to see the evidence of cookie crumbs left on the plate, sometimes a reply from our Santa note (thanks Dad) –  we all knew your handwriting. We would take our stockings down and dig through them. I don’t really know why? because our stockings always contained the same thing year after year, fruit and nuts! We didn’t expect anything other than fruit and nuts, but we still looked forward to it. We enjoyed cracking them open, to reveal a full-sized nut.. it proved you were crafted in this area after a few years of experience.

I am not a huge fan of eating oranges, but I do love to smell them. I think it takes me back to those Christmas mornings. I would peel the oranges for Dad, he would eat them..and let me toss them into the grate in the fireplace. Other than the fact that it was just sort of our fascination with watching stuff burn in the fireplace, it smelled wonderful! Nutshells were not all that exciting to watch smolder, but the orange peels took on a whole different look. Okay, so I still have some WV pyromania in me…even at Christmas.

I can’t help but feel a little melancholy when the stockings are emptied at my home on Christmas morning. Who knows what treasures and trinkets will be in there for my daughter….usually a card for my husband and the coal that I leave in there year after year..oops.. I think this year I may fill my own stocking with fruit and nuts, as a reminder that although it is nothing new, it is still an  anticipated treasure.

Make your Christmas moments last…find what speaks to the child in you and revive it again this year, even if it is as simple as fruit and nuts!