Have you ever wondered about the origin of the word sock hop? Now what does hopping have to do with the fact that one is wearing socks? I guess there might be another reason why the word sock hop is used, but I can’t think of one. I just love the Net for all the info you can find on it, like what a sock hop is and why it came to be called that in the first place.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there are likely other reasons that come into play when it comes to giving sock hops a concrete definition. Really, let’s take a quick look at how schools came up with hopping about a school with socks on the kid’s feet.

I bet if many of you who went through school in the 60s will recall those sock hops, the Friday after school tradition where almost the whole school assembled in the gymnasium and rolled out the records for a dance. Sure, there were some kids who weren’t allowed to go to the dance for various reasons – likely because they didn’t have proper socks, but for the main part, just about everyone was there.

Sometimes we went all out and bought some decorations to fancy the sock hop up – you know, maybe some streamers, a few vases of flowers and maybe even chewing gum – oh yeah that was a highlight. It didn’t matter how the gym looked so long as there was a dance and you got to mingle with the coolest dude in the world – the captain of the basketball team, in his socks.

We couldn’t go in to the gym without making sure we took off our street shoes and boots and left them by the door with the teacher on duty. That gym floor felt cold on our feet just wearing socks, but when we got dancing, they warmed up, you know hopping in our socks.

Wearing socks to dance was actually a smart idea; because we could do some pretty funky dance moves while wearing them, not to mention do flips and backslides. What fun to know the origin of the word sock hops! Socks are so understated that we never give them that much thought and we really should since we sure put them through a lot of grief trying to keep up with us. Now, do you believe what I said?