I know the holidays are over, but before I forget,
can anyone please help to clear up
a controversy over Saint Nicholas?

It's that business of paying the dowries of impoverished women,
and how that morphed into the stocking hung by the chimney with care.

Now, what I read about the actual saint,
is that at the outside door of the homes,
you could find the ladies' BOOTS, and there
St. Nicholas would drop the gold pieces.
Not a question of going inside the house
and looking for the ladies' unmentionables !


So was it always stockings
or was it boots that transformed into stockings?