Another Christmas Tradition

Eating my umpteenth Asian orange on the holiday season. What a treat since the 1950s! That was one item at Christmas my poor family looked forward to–getting a wooden crate (then) of wrapped Japanese oranges–the ‘zipper orange’ as we used to call them. (A peace offering after WWII to the West after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?)

Many of these kept us going through the cold, hard winter. And then over the years, the wood packaging gave way to thick cardboard boxes with air holes, and finally Chinese oranges as well, a gift from our latest Western rival.

But for me, they remain a special memory and taste of the black-and-white 1950s that was such a remarkably welcome East-West tradition at this dark, cold time of the year and a sign of a universal accord we once take for granted.

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