Ditto. And nuts for some reason.
In Northern California, both oranges and bananas were common place year round, though as children, we got oranges in our stockings. On reflection, I’m guessing this was because they were a special Christmas treat in the 30’s for our parents and just evolved into a tradition with their kids.
I was watching an episode of RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst today and they watch a movie set in 1983 where someone living in Wisconsin is shown drinking orange juice by mixing powdered concentrate and water, and they reviewers remark that used to be super common back then. I was wondering if that was still a regional thing, maybe the cold northern states still couldn’t get actual pure orange juice?
My dad grew up on a farm in Northern Minnesota in the '40s and the '50s, and an orange and some walnuts were a common treat Christmas morning. Bananas I’m not sure about.
I grew up in Wisconsin, and graduated high school in 1983. We drank a lot of orange juice, almost all of it from frozen concentrate (my family bought Minute Maid, like the picture below). I don’t recall ever seeing powdered orange juice concentrate back then; when I think of “powdered orange breakfast drink,” I think of Tang.
https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=NMAH-DOR2013-00692
We also had the “family tradition” of an orange tucked in the toes of our Christmas stockings, though they weren’t especially exotic by then (late 50s and early 60s.)
My mom told me once that it had been a tradition in her family (she was born in 1922) and at that time they were indeed an exotic, expensive treat to her working class family. My father’s family was upper middle class, and oranges held no special significance to his childhood.
Mother also said there was a second reason for the orange. Our parents put the christmas stockings at the foot of our beds, and we weren’t allowed to get out of bed until we could smell the coffee brewing, IOW, until our parents were up and ready to face the day. The orange, plus the box of animal crackers that was also always included, plus various bits of candy and such served as breakfast that day, allowing them to sleep in a precious while longer. 
Incidentally, her father was a sign painter. A REAL sign painter, as in, he mainly painted bill boards. Not put up preprinted rolls, he painted them, from a small sample picture using brushes and pots of paint. I wonder how long it’s been since real sign painting was an ordinary career?
I grew up in the 50’s, born in 1949, and lived in Portland, Oregon, and here are my memories of oranges and bananas.
I had to take a tablespoon of cod liver oil every morning and evening, and it was always followed with half an orange (my sister got the other half) to kill the taste of the oil. This was all year round. I won’t say they were all navel oranges because I don’t know, and some of the oranges were pretty tart as I remember, but it was always oranges, and this went on for years. I think we also got an orange in our Christmas stockings, I think it was more of a tradition than that it was supposed to be a special treat.
I hate bananas and always have. When my mother made fruit salad, it always had bananas in it. This goes back as far as I can remember. I was not allowed to fiddle around when serving myself to avoid the bananas, so I had to eat at least a few pieces every time. This, and the cod liver oil, are where I learned to eat the stuff I hate first, so I could end with the taste of the things I liked.
This reminds me of the idea that you should keep a bucket of live frogs by your bed. And every morning, as soon as you wake up, you should reach into the bucket, grab a frog, and eat it alive.
That way you can get out of bed every morning knowing that the worst part of your day is over.
Growing up in the 50s, we could always get oranges and bananas. Bananas were common; the banana peel jokes had been around for decades (yes, they are based on the peels being thrown on the sidewalk).
Oranges and grapefruit were in supermarkets, but they weren’t the same quality of those shipped to you from Florida. Supermarket grapefruit were sour; you usually needed to add sugar. Florida grapefruit were much Sweeter.
Growing up in the 70s/80s, we specifically got mandarin oranges in our Christmas stockings, which my mother’s parents quaintly called “Jap oranges”. And mandarin oranges were basically unavailable any other time of year.
Did Bing Crosby die broke? I’d be concerned about this financial management skills.
I always got oranges and nuts in my stocking in the 50s - 60s, and I hated it. Jeez, Santa, your fat ass went to a lot of trouble grabbing fruit from our fruit bowl and nuts from our nut bowl and throwing them in my stocking, didn’t you! I want toys!
There is a bit in one of the books where Laura goes to a party and the bit she’s most excited about is everyone getting a whole orange each, and none of the teenage settler kids being quite sure how to eat it.
My elderly English Great-Aunt used to have a banana for breakfast every morning. She did like telling us how she couldn’t get them for years in her youth, so being able to have one every day still felt like luxury. I always found that odd, because she was the most set-in-her-ways eater imaginable, and would refuse to even try anything ‘exotic’ or ‘foriegn’, but bananas somehow weren’t either.
I grew up in NYC and graduated HS in 1981 - we also used frozen concentrated orange juice. Not because we couldn’t get fresh - but because frozen concentrate was cheaper. I have always assumed that this was because it’s cheaper to ship 6 oz of concentrate than 24 oz of fresh juice.
I grew up in the 60s & 70s. We would each get an apple and an orange in our stockings (along with other stuff). These were HUGE pieces of fruit. The grocery stores would have them for sale only at Christmastime. My Italian side of the family always had a bowl of tangerines and mixed nuts on the table for Christmas. In fact, I still have my grandma’s nut “bowl”. It’s a slab (about 4" thick and 1’ in diameter) of a tree trunk that is hollowed out except for the very center. The center has holes to hold the nut cracking tools/equipment - crackers and picks.
By 1930 virtually every electric stand mixer came with a juicer bowl and reamer that replaced the regular beaters. So there must have been oranges around.
Are you sure that was orange juice and not orange drink (something like Tang or Kool-Aid)? I’ve never heard of powdered orange juice concentrate.
I was a child in rural New York State in the 1950’s. We were about two hours’ drive more or less north of New York City, and it was pretty much farm country at the time.
Oranges and bananas were both common foods in our house. My mother used to make fresh-squeezed orange juice for breakfast, and we also ate the oranges as oranges. I think the bananas may have been somewhat seasonal, but I certainly didn’t think of them as rare or unusual.
My parents and then my mother gave gift boxes of Florida oranges clear up through the 1990’s; in the same fashion as people often give fruit baskets or fancy trays of nuts and dried fruit or whatever, even though all the ingredients are routinely available in the stores all year long.
My mom grew up in Norway. She was born in the early 40s. By the late 40s she had never tasted a banana. My grandmother managed to get a couple of them because the store had a tiny supply one day, and gave one to my mom and one to my mom’s older brother. He ate his, and then convinced my mom that she wouldn’t like hers, and she gave it to him. He got in a huge amount of trouble.
I think “exotic” fruit stayed in short supply into the 50s.
We also got an orange in the toe of our stockings on Christmas. (And nuts.) Even though we had oranges all the time where I lived.
I still do this for my kids, and yes, they think it’s weird.
I grew up near Chicago, and in the 70s I don’t remember oranges any time of year other than around Christmas. As Joey_P said, produce had distinct seasons then. You couldn’t just go to the grocery store and buy oranges or apples in June, nor could you buy watermelon in December. Today, those are available (but not necessarily excellent) year-long. I was at the store yesterday, and was surprised to see a stack of “personal” size watermelons.
As for orange juice, I don’t think I had fresh-squeezed OJ until I was an adult. The frozen concentrate was the norm, and even that was a relatively uncommon treat.