I’m plump, I have a bit of cellulite and a tanned complexion… However, I don’t spend my days by the pool drinking spritzes. I am requisitioned at the end of the year to make children’s eyes shine when they discover me in their sock left by the fireplace on Christmas Eve. I often spend the night alongside my friend the chocolate wrapper… You probably guessed it, I’m the Christmas orange, the one that was long awaited a few years ago, before the multitude of gifts arrived. come eclipse it.
It was also the time when you couldn’t find me on any supermarket shelf, at any time of the year. When I was so rare and tasty that I thrilled the taste buds of amazed kids. In the family of Yves, now 79 years old, I was, in the years 1940-1950, “an event”. The kids “rushed to [me] taste”. Sometimes the pleasure was so great that it was postponed in order to keep me as long as possible. And even until I let myself rot, as Nicole, 70, says: “We made them last as long as possible. Sometimes we put off the pleasure of tasting the orange slices so much that they rotted before we could taste them! And yet we were happy. »
Others treasured my bitter peel to keep that citrus smell clean at the end of the year. “Once the orange had been ingested, the peels were wrapped in a handkerchief which he kept for as long as possible to retain the smell”, says a reader about his grandfather “born in 1905”. Sometime after the 1960s, you could still find me at Christmas. Except that I was no longer offered in the homes, but in the classrooms of certain schools which carried on the tradition. Today, I find myself a little in some decorations around the holiday tables, planted with cloves. However, I haven’t lost my strong symbolism, which has slipped from luxury to modesty.
A luxury reserved for her majesty
A simple citrus fruit today, I was once a luxury reserved for the aristocracy and even kings. Exotic by my origin, my color, my smell, I was the subject of real competition in high society. I even had my own garden at the Palace of Versailles in the 17th century. Then I also had my quarters in the capital, to shelter my orange trees in the Tuileries garden. I then became a luxury fruit, a symbol that stuck with my orange peel skin for several centuries. But I was not yet a Christmas-related product. Moreover, at that time, we still did not really offer gifts on December 25th. It will take another few decades, around the 18th and 19th centuries, for me to become an object of desire at the end of the year.
With the industrial revolution at the end of the 19th century, the arrival of the rails and the train, my journey from Andalusia or Portugal to French territory became simpler, more efficient, faster. I started to become more and more accessible to the population, while keeping this image of rarity. “Around 1860, offering an orange at Christmas became obvious,” according to historian Xavier Mauduit. “There’s like a fantasy around the orange as the precious gift, we offer the symbol,” he explains. Democratized, I still kept this luxurious image, two centuries after the time of the court of Versailles.
Democratization with the arrival of the train
Little by little, the wealthiest families have nevertheless abandoned me, preferring dolls, small cars, electric trains and other toys rather than the juicy and sweet citrus fruit that must be skinned. It was the era of department stores, Ladies happiness by Zola. My price is falling, and the most modest families will then seize this gift idea still associated with luxury, but no longer by the same social classes.
“We were looking forward to Christmas. And we were mostly waiting for the treats. Our parents were sharecroppers in Burgundy, with poor incomes and many children. After laying our slippers at the foot of the fireplace, we would go to bed hoping to hear Santa Claus come into the house. Overwhelmed by sleep, it was not until the next morning that we went to check on his passage. And there, joy, we all had a small gift accompanied by a few sugar foil wrappers and two oranges (one in each shoe!),” recalls a 70-year-old reader.
Then Christmas became a “Coca-Cola party”
I finally fell into disuse in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Americanization of society got the better of my simplicity. The consumer society has taken over and toys have replaced me more and more. But today, I still live in the spirit of Christmas through the memories of those who pampered me so much. “My grandfather, born in 1905 on a farm in the Jura, systematically told me during Christmas Eve what he experienced on Christmas when he was my age”, recalls a 59-year-old reader.
These stories endure like a Christmas tale in the stories of the elderly reminiscing about “the good old days”. However, it is true that as Xavier Mauduit points out, “there is certainly a construction of memory in many people” who remember their childhood with a nostalgic look. Even disappeared from under the tree, thanks to these stories, I keep my very strong symbolism.