This post was originally published here at AMR on 12/20/16.
We rarely got anything in our stockings when I was growing up. My parents had a
hard enough time being able to put a few gifts under the tree. They
didn't see the point of wasting money on little things that ended up
getting broke or lost within a week. On the rare occasions that we did
have something in them, we would find an orange, apple, or candy cane. The fruit wasn't that big of a deal because we had access to fresh
fruit all year, but that wasn't always the case for people in Appalachia.
Money
wasn't something that could easily be found among the early settlers living in the mountains. Things
like candies, toys, and fresh fruit were hard to come by. An orange
would have been an enormous gift at that time. Once I started
researching the history behind this tradition, I recalled a book that
helped explain how rare an orange was in 1850's Appalachia:
I
remember trying to return the favor by giving him one of a pair of
oranges that the teamsters had left as a treat. Bear had not experienced
oranges before, and he watched me eat mine before he started on his
own.
It
took him an hour to finish. He peeled it slowly and studied the
differing sides of the peels and smelled them and smelled his fingers.
Then he ate each section very slowly, sniffing each one before he put it
in his mouth. He savored every moment of his consumption of that
orange. When he was done he collected all the pieces of peel and dried
them in the sun like deer jerky. A month later, they had lost most of
their color, but they still held the ghost of the orange's aroma, and
Bear kept them in a gourd sealed with a wooden stopper to hold in the
scent that would have to do him until another orange made its way into
the mountains.
- Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
There
is some history behind Christmas oranges. St. Nicholas was a bishop
before he became a saint. The legend says that he rode through a town
where a storekeeper had three beautiful daughters and couldn't afford to
offer a dowry for them. This meant that the girls would become
destitute once their father passed away.
Bishop
Nicholas knew that the father was a proud man so he tossed three sacks
of gold through an open window (or chimney depending on who is telling
the story) while the family was sleeping. One of the bags landed in the
toe of a stocking that was hanging by the fire to dry. When
the family got up the next morning, they found the gold, including the
one in the stocking which had turned into a ball overnight.
Giving
an orange today is a way to celebrate generosity without expecting
anything in return. It symbolizes that gold ball and is a reminder to
care for those in need.
Who knew there was so much behind a piece of fruit in a Christmas stocking? Did you get an orange in your stocking?
