My girls enjoy hearing stories of things that happened when I was a little girl. Most of the time they laugh, or think I'm crazy, but they love the story of how I always got an orange in my Christmas stocking. Every year in the very bottom of our Christmas stocking my siblings and I would get an orange. We knew it was always the last thing we would pull out. To a person, we would pull it out, look at it, and say, "Great, an orange," and get up and go put it in the refrigerator. Of course, as kids, we would have preferred something else in our stocking, like money or candy. Strangely enough, I remember being jealous of my cousins who received nuts in the toes of their stockings. Nuts! I cannot say why I always coveted those mixed nuts. I mean, they weren't even shelled, but I loved the beauty and texture of all the different colors that would come tumbling out. Do you think I have mental issues? Coveting mixed nuts? Hey, I was a kid. Who knows what was going through my mind?
Last year, for fun, I put oranges in the toes of my kids stockings. The looks on their faces were priceless. "Great, an orange!" they all said. And, promptly got up and put them in the fridge. We all shared a great laugh together.
I'm not sure why my mother always gave us oranges. Maybe that's what she got in her stocking. (And we were glad to have that, I can hear her saying.) Maybe we couldn't afford anything else. Maybe she was using it as a space filler so she didn't have to get so many other little trinkets and junk. (Maybe she will read this post and tell us why...hint, hint) More than likely she will say, "I don't know why, I just did!"
Here's hoping for an orange (or nuts) in your Christmas stocking this year.
4 comments:
Maybe that is why I dont like oranges to this day! :)
Must have been the "done" thing back then. We always got an orange too (in the toe of course)...but we got nuts too. Woohoo! Weird nuts no one ever ate along with the oranges. I mean Brazil nuts are practically impossible to shell. And don't taste that great if you can ever get in one...
Oh, and I'm bored, by the way...but being "good"...just in case you're keeping track, you know...
So tell me you put mixed nuts in their stockings this year???!
:) Merry Christmas!
I had a teacher in high school who for Christmas one year gave each of us an orange. She told us she never gave presents but wanted to share this "special" gift with us. My parents agreed with her explanation as to why it was so special. Fruit was a luxury. My parent's parents (my grandparents) and this teacher's parents all grew up in the depression. People ate what would sustain them. It was more practical to put the money into potatoes or beans which would keep you full than into fruit which did not.
So, for them an orange was a very special thing, a splurge, because they never really had them.
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