Page 44 - 2019octnov

If You Never Went To A Sock Hop... Then You Really Missed Out

by Rose Richie
f you attended a few sock hops then you’ll remember how Decades later schools were still throwing these kinds of
fun they were. If you didn’t then we’re sad to say you events. In the end kids found it was jolly good fun to dance
Imissed a whole lot of fun. Sock hops weren’t like formal without shoes on, with or without socks, as in some places
school dances today. Instead they were a chance to really let dancing barefoot was the trend. In the more prosperous times
your hair down and literally kick off your shoes. But, if the of the 1950s and 1960s, school dances came to be a more
history seems a bit mysterious then read on to find out the formal event attended in dress clothes and shoes. But, the
history of how sock hops got started. name still stuck around for decades despite the fact that by
The reason these high school and college dances were called that point nearly all the kids kept their shoes on to boogie
sock hops is that the kids were required to take their shoes down.
off to avoid scuffing the gym floor. The hard rubber soles
on shoes could easily mark up expensive gymnasium floor. It
seems that an inordinate amount of time in every school was
spent protecting those gym floors!
The first dances like these were held as early as 1944 in
aid of the Junior Red Cross and war relief efforts. A small
charge was handed over in exchange for a night of good old-
fashioned dancing, sans socks since these events were held in
school gymnasiums. Much less formal than a cotillion, these
dances were more accessible to working class teens despite
having a cover charge.
The cost of a formal dress or a suit would have been
astronomical for a family who was perhaps relying on the
sole income of a mother working in a factory worker or a
family still struggling a bit after the Great Depression. But, an
informal dance that was inexpensive was much more doable
and required little else than a few coins a lot of energy.
As time went the high schools started holding their own sock
hops. The tradition spread and soon sock hops were a national
trend and by 1948 the phenomenon had made the pages of
LIFE Magazine as another crazy fad those “teen-agers” were

into (both the terms “sock hop” and “teenager” were pretty
new, in decades past the word “teener” was sometimes used).
The term bobby soxers also sprang up around this time,
specifically referring to the white socks that were in fashion
for swooning young ladies at the time.

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