Christmas stockings are not meant for hanging by the fireplace
Let me get this straight: in France, stockings are not meant for hanging by the fireplace. Also to clear any ambiguity in terminology, in France, stockings are soft airy sheery things meant to embellish legs, normally female. They are, if worn the French way, legendary, tempting, wonderfully lascivious, and throughout times a sure avenue to sensuous imagination. Incidentally they really do contain as teasing little treats as found in the ones hung by the fireplace in other countries, just, alas, a little different.
In case though you want to firmly stick with the tradition of hanging your stockings by the fireplace, don’t be surprised if there’s exquisitely naughty gifts in them on Christmas Day, mayhappen Santaclaus has heard your prayer for a Very Merry French Christmas.
Wear them well and shed them gracefully, honi soit qui mal y pense.
This is Les Poissonchat’s Wondrous Advent Calendar! Advent calendars are a huge tradition where I come from: you make little gifts for your loved ones every day until Christmas Day, fourandtwenty little surprises. The advent calendars come in beautifully old fashioned prints on cardboard, with extra glitter, and each day there’s a paper door waiting for you to pry open. Others are more elaborate, pretty baskets filled with twenty four numbered parcels, decorated with red velvet ribbons. The one I’m making for you this season is altogether a different one, and, quite obviously, it’s about beloved France, Christmas in France, and after all, what it takes to celebrate a proper French Christmas.
Les Poissonchats 
My Mother used to tell us if we were naughty before Christmas we would get ashes from the fireplace in our stockings not gifts! ??????
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Order of the Garter! Perfect!! And past experience will tell you that they shred gracefully. Or should that be gratefully?
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My In-laws told our all their grandchildren that those who were badly behaved would get coal in their stockings. And lo and behold, one Christmas, there was a lump of coal in one of my nephew’s stockings! My younger son was absolutely shocked! The gleaming brass coal scuttle by the fireplace could have been a giveaway, but believers will believe.
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