The Orangient Express

Did you get an orange in your Christmas stocking?

No! Don't tell me all you got was a lump of coal! I'm sure some of you got an orange. Or put an orange in somebody else's stocking. Didn't you? That's the custom, you know. You can look it up on Wikipedia if you doubt me. All I know is that I ALWAYS got an orange in my Christmas stocking. Oranges are synonymous with Christmas for me. A Christmas stocking without an orange is like a day without sunshine. And I'm NOT stealing a slogan from that old Anita Bryant commercial. I'm paraphrasing. Not plagiarizing.

The smell of oranges belongs with Christmas. My band used to sell citrus as a fundraiser every fall. Let me clarify, by BAND, I mean my high school band, of which I was band president, not my imaginary garage band called Mommy's Got a Headache. The boxes of grapefruit and oranges arrived right around Christmas time. That was back when you actually got something worthwhile for your donation. No slivers of wrapping paper, or twenty-six-dollar candles, or six-ounce boxes of sugar-free peanut butter cups that suddenly turned up unavailable when the order was shipped, so a six-ounce box of white-chocolate-covered peanut butter cups, bursting with sugar, was substituted, making the intended diabetic recipient of this gift unable to enjoy your good deed with the hefty price tag.

I always made sure that Santa put an orange in my boys' Christmas stockings. Sometimes that meant an extra trip to the store on Christmas Eve day, because Santa was quite forgetful. The sight of my kids digging through those stockings, elbow deep in candy and trinkets, to pull that orange from the toe, then frown, demand, "What's THIS?" and set it aside like a hot-potato, shellacked, odious pile of dog feces made it all worthwhile.

What's the deal with kids these days? Don't they know that Laura and Mary Ingalls were THRILLED to receive an orange in their Christmas stocking? That, a peppermint stick, and a rag doll were more than they ever hoped for. No net bags of gold chocolate coins, Hershey's kisses, mini Butterfingers, rubber-band-shooters that make pigs fly, and brown plastic mooses that poop jellly beans for them!

So much for the specialness of the Christmas stocking orange. My boys bring them to me. "Here. You need to do something with this." Oh, I've learned my lesson. One year, left to their own devices, one boy left his orange sitting in an out-of-the-way basement nook or cranny. It was discovered a month later. Did you know that green is sometimes the new orange? Or old orange.

I have a little bag of oranges on the kitchen counter by the toaster. I eat one every day. I'm prolonging the holiday season. According to my calculations, it should last five more days.