:eek:
Did this give _anyone_ else a very disturbing visual???
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### Author:  [@Casey1505](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Casey1505)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/8 "2005-11-28T15:06:11Z")
You can eat a Christmas orange? I thought they just added heft and made the toe of the stocking look full.
My grandmother always had thin mints for the holidays. They’re like Peppermint Patties, but about the size of a half dollar and really thin. It was the only time I’d have them. I’d eat a years worth when she _did_ have them, but they were specifically for the holidays.
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### Author:  [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/9 "2005-11-28T15:59:52Z")
When I saw the title my first thought was of _chocolate_ oranges, not the kind that grow on trees! Those are what I remember most from Christmases past – [Terry’s Chocolate Orange](http://www.kraft.com.au/confectionery/index.cfm?fuseaction=TERRY.main)s, to be exact. 🙂 They’re available in my local grocery store and so I’ve taken to eating them throughout the year, but they still always remind me of Christmas.
Mmmm, chocolate orange…
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### Author:  [@GingerOfTheNorth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GingerOfTheNorth)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/10 "2005-11-28T16:09:40Z")
**featherlou** - we don’t get mandarins here. Woe! They get Clementines, which are hit-and-miss, and have seeds.
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### Author:  [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/11 "2005-11-28T16:30:35Z")
What the heck is a Christmas orange, and what makes it so different than an orange gotten in, say, July?
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### Author:  [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/12 "2005-11-28T16:56:22Z")
When my dad was a sharecropper’s kid in the ass end of Georgia growing up, they got oranges in their stockings and it was _exciting_. They were thrilled. It was a treat.
Thankfully, my mom stopped putting oranges in stockings a while back, because nobody ever ate them. How things change!
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### Author:  [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/13 "2005-11-28T17:05:32Z")
> [@bouv](#):
>
> What the heck is a Christmas orange, and what makes it so different than an orange gotten in, say, July?
Little tangerine/clementine/tangelo or other small cousin of the orange. Santa brings them to _some_ kids but not to others. Nobody knows why.
Growing up we never did chestnuts or eggnog. I still don’t. But the Christmas oranges…yeah, I do those.
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### Author:  [@Daithi\_Lacha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daithi_Lacha)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/14 "2005-11-28T18:12:57Z")
> [@bouv](#):
>
> What the heck is a Christmas orange, and what makes it so different than an orange gotten in, say, July?
It’s become a tradition to put an orange and/or an apple into a Christmas stocking. I just did a quick search for when this tradition started, but all I could find was a mention of a story about St. Nicholas:
Passing through a village, the Saint heard tell of a very poor man who had three unmarried daughters. With no money for a dowry, he knew they would remain at home as spinsters. St. Nicholas vistited their house & noticed that the sisters had hung up their stockings to dry by the chimney.
The next day, the girls retrieved their leggings and discovered that a lump of gold had been placed in each stocking: a fine dowry, indeed.
Fable? Perhaps. But that’s folklore for you! So there’s speculation that the orange in the stocking represents that charitable lump of gold. Also, oranges would have been very exotic, and something that could only have been afforded once a year.
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### Author:  [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/15 "2005-11-28T19:28:50Z")
Store-bought Pfeffernusse is always a holiday treat. Coming from a southern culture, I never knew about it until after college. Now it’s one of the things I look for at the grocery store when that time of year rolls around.
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### Author:  [@GingerOfTheNorth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GingerOfTheNorth)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/16 "2005-11-28T19:34:20Z")
> [@bouv](#):
>
> What the heck is a Christmas orange, and what makes it so different than an orange gotten in, say, July?
In Western Canada, where featherlou lives, we get Mandarin oranges. They’re sorta like Clementines. They’re seedless and easy-to-peel and always very sweet and nice. And, only available around Christmas time, usually.
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### Author:  [@romansperson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/romansperson)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2005, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/17 "2005-11-28T19:39:57Z")
> [@GingerOfTheNorth](#):
>
> In Western Canada, where featherlou lives, we get Mandarin oranges. They’re sorta like Clementines. They’re seedless and easy-to-peel and always very sweet and nice. And, only available around Christmas time, usually.
The clementines we get here are seedless (I’ve always thought mandarins and clementines were the same thing). And SO good. I brought three with me to work today and I’ve got one left. I was thrilled when those little crates showed up in the store early this year!
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### Author:  [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2005, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/18 "2005-11-29T08:44:48Z")
> [@featherlou](#):
>
> Anybody got anything else Christmas-y that they just loooove?
Pepperkaker.
Pepperkaker pepperkaker pepperkaker pepperkaker pepperkaker pepperkaker!
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### Author:  [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2005, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/19 "2005-11-29T15:23:23Z")
Yeah, **Ginger’s** got it right - it’s the Mandarin oranges that I live for. We get Clementine’s here occasionally, too, but they’re no Mandarin orange. There’s a certain taste to a Mandarin that no other orange can duplicate.
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### Author:  [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2005, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ode-to-christmas-oranges/332964/20 "2005-11-29T15:25:11Z")
{Note to self- look into _pepperkaker_}