“He came”! He came”! I can still hear my not-so-dainty bare feet thumping, as I ran towards the Christmas tree. Glowing with warm colored lights, glittering tinsel, and sparkling handblown glass ornaments, it was magical! Excited to see the toys below, I dashed into the kitchen to make sure the cookies left on the table for Santa had been eaten. The remains of a bitten cookie and crumbs was all the evidence I needed, confirming that it really was Santa who had placed the gifts beneath the tree.
Poking my head into my parent’s bedroom, I repeated, “He came”! Clarifying, “Santa was here”! I roused them from what certainly must have been a long, uninterrupted, restful Christmas Eve’s sleep. Mom put on her robe as Dad grabbed his camera. The three of us, up shortly before the sun, walked towards the living room, illuminated by the rack of lights atop Dad’s movie camera.
First, I dashed to get my Christmas stocking, hung, not from the mantle, as our Paterson, New Jersey home had no fireplace, but rather from the large key in the cabinet door of the grandfather’s clock. A wintery off-white stocking, adorned with glitter and sequins, was stuffed with little toys, treats, and a candy cane sticking out the top. At the very bottom, nestled in the toe, the very last thing to pull out, sat an orange. Every year there were different toys beneath the tree and different goodies in the stocking, but there was always an orange at the bottom.
I never knew why Santa always put an orange in my stocking, and looking back, I wonder why I never asked. Nonetheless, a Christmas stocking would never be complete without an orange. Only recently did I start investigating the reasons behind this. As it turns out, there are several origins of the Christmas orange.
Traveling back in time to the 4th century AD, legend has it that a very poor man with three daughters didn’t have enough money for their dowries. Hearing of this, St. Nicholas dropped three round pieces of gold down their chimney, and they landed in the girl’s stockings drying below. The round orange with its goldish hue, came to symbolize the balls of gold given by St. Nicholas.
Fast forwarding to the 1800s, oranges, native to warm climates, were exotic and rare in colder regions. The slow modes of transportation of the era meant oranges came with a hefty price tag. Only the rich could afford this sweet citrus fruit, so gifting an orange was regarded as giving someone a luxury item.
During the Depression and the lean years that followed, people didn’t have money to spend on gifts. Many struggled just to put food on their table and oranges were regarded as an extra special treat. Without the financial ability to put gifts and toys under the tree, an orange, sometimes accompanied by nuts, was placed in a Christmas stocking.
Only now, as an adult, do I understand why my parents, tired from secretly playing Santa, happily watched and filmed me pulling out the orange they had placed in the toe of my Christmas stocking.
Along with an orange, there was one other thing I got every year for Christmas – ice skates! From the first year that I graduated to single blade skates, up until my preteens, there was always a box of new ice skates for my bigger, growing feet under the tree. Tucked in the box was a pair of wool socks – skating socks – to keep my feet warm.
Back then, northern New Jersey still had long cold winters with lots of snow and frozen ponds to skate on. Local parks without natural ponds created ice rinks. One such rink was in Westside Park, a 26-acre wooded oasis nestled in an industrial urban setting. Paterson, New Jersey’s Westside Park had a small stream and rolling grass-covered fields, which turned into glistening white hills for sledding in the winter. Tucked in the back close to the Passaic River stood a pavilion with a rectangular cemented area in front. Every winter it was flooded to make an ice-skating rink. Every winter, it froze solid!
It was extra fun to venture further to the town of Totowa that shared a golf course with its neighboring town of Wayne, NJ. Getting out of the confines of the cement city was like getting an exotic orange, a taste of luxury. The golf course had a pond that froze solid every winter and was open to the public. My mother helped me lace up my skates and I was quickly off, gliding around the pond. A natural body of water, the pond was complete with its own natural obstacles, cracks in the ice, uneven bumps, clumps of snow, and an occasional stick jutting above the surface, all poised and ready to snag the front of your skate, sending you sliding across the ice on your belly. It was expected and all part of the fun.
The cold air turned my cheeks and tip of my nose red and numbed my toes. To defrost, a small white building on the property had a room for changing in and out of you skates and sold steaming cups of hot chocolate. I can still feel the sensation of holding the hot carboard cup between my mitten-clad hands, and my toes tingling as the numbness subsided and feeling returned.
Decades have passed and the winters have warmed. In northern New jersey, finding a frozen pond to skate on all winter long is as rare as it was finding an orange in northern regions during the 1800s. Now oranges of all varieties stock supermarket shelves and are sold at reduced prices during the Christmas season. Shipped in bulk, oranges are no longer a luxury. The quick rise of commercial transportation, industrialization, technology, and the associated climatic effects, have tipped the scales.
As a child, I excitedly awaited each snowstorm, always wondering how much snow we would get. I hoped for blizzards and dreamed of rides in Santa’s sleigh. Temperatures, consistently below freezing, assured winters that were white all season long. We built snowman, went sledding, had snowball fights, and skated on ponds. Now I wonder, will it ever snow again? Sitting in front of my Christmas tree, fully decorated and with a few ornaments saved from my childhood tucked in its branches, I realized, I’m still that same little girl who pulled an orange from her stocking and unwrapped new ice skates every Christmas. I’ve grown but I haven’t changed. It’s the world that is now a different place.