Christmas Shoes

You can get Christmas shoes for babies or adults around December in most areas. You can even find them in Australia during June.

Make Your Own

Can't find exactly what you're looking for in the store? Looking for Christmas shoes but finding them not to be in season? You can design your own inexpensively with a pair of white sneakers. You just need fabric paint, bells, sequins, holiday shoestrings, and a little bit of creativity.

With a pencil, freehand or stencil a few holly leaves, a snowman, or a gift onto the toes of the shoes. If you'd like, go ahead and write a message like, "Jingle Bells" or "Merry Christmas" on your shoes. You can write the whole message on each shoe or split it up, putting "Jingle" on one and "Bells" on the other, for example.

Trace and fill in the pencil drawings as desired with red, green, gold, and silver fabric paints. Once that's dry, it's time for the strands of sequins. Glue them along the stitching on each shoe.

The last step is lacing up the shoes with the shoestrings or holiday ribbon mentioned earlier. Put one end through one eye, and then slide a bell or two on so that they're positioned in the middle top of the shoe. Continue lacing the shoe as usual. Voila!

Traditions and Superstitions

• In Greece, the people sometimes burn their old shoes on Christmas. It's a ritual to keep away wicked elves and keep bad luck at bay for the coming year.
• In the Victorian times, people gave each other miniature porcelain shoes during the Christmas season.
• If you're a very superstitious person, you probably know not to give shoes for Christmas. The old saying goes, if you give someone a pair of shoes for Christmas, they'll walk away from you within the next year.
• Get a new pair of shoes for Christmas? Keep them in the box until the 26th. It's bad luck to wear new shoes on Christmas Day.

In the Media

"Sir I want to buy these shoes, for my Mama, please. It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size." This pair of Christmas shoes is probably the most heard about in the media. Newsong performs the song, titled appropriately: Christmas Shoes. It's a song about a little boy who's trying to buy his mom a pair of slippers for Christmas. He thinks she might "meet Jesus tonight" and wants her to have something nice to leave the Earth in. The man in line behind him, the voice in the song, is reminded of the meaning of Christmas by this pair of shoes.

Similarly, in a movie called The Christmas Shoes from 2002, another little boy is trying to buy his dying mother shoes for Christmas. The plot is thicker than that in the song, of course. But once again, shoes as a holiday gift have made their way into the media. Despite the superstitions surrounding them, shoes seem to be a popular gift among family members.