So growing up in a small Midwest town (900 people) Christmas was a big thing.  Santa would come in on the fire truck and go into the Town Hall building and sit on the stage.  All the the kids of town were waiting outside for their chance to see Santa and receive our brown bag of goodies.  Always included was an orange and yes we were all excited to get it.

I often wondered why the orange so I tried a little research and this is what I found.

St. Nicholas and his sacks of gold.
One explanation for this tradition stretches back hundreds of years to St. Nicholas, who was born in what is now present-day Turkey. He inherited a large sum of money, but devoted his life to helping others, and eventually became a bishop.

According to the story, St. Nicholas learned of a poor man who wasn't able to find suitors for his three daughters because he didn't have money for a dowry. St. Nicholas traveled to the house, and tossed three sacks of gold down the chimney for each of the dowries. The gold happened to land in each of the girls' stockings which were hanging by the fire to dry. The oranges we receive today are a symbol of the gold that was left in the stockings.

Did you get an orange in your stocking? We did and yes it was a treat since oranges were a little expensive where I lived.  I remember saving it to eat later.
https://www.thekitchn.com/heres-why-we-put-oranges-in-stockings-at-christmas-holiday-traditions-from-the-kitchn-213985

@Solars Toy

We always did, even way down in Louisiana.  Oranges, maybe an apple, that hard ribbon candy and some sort of gumdrop thing that tasted as if it had cloves in it.   

I haven't watched this yet, but I subscribe to UP Faith and Family channel for like $5.00 a month and they're featuring this movie:

https://my.upfaithandfamily.com/christmas-oranges

Now that you've got me thinking about Christmas oranges, I'm going to watch it this weekend.

Quote from: Grammy on December 11, 2021, 03:03:31 AM@Solars Toy

We always did, even way down in Louisiana.  Oranges, maybe an apple, that hard ribbon candy and some sort of gumdrop thing that tasted as if it had cloves in it. 

I haven't watched this yet, but I subscribe to UP Faith and Family channel for like $5.00 a month and they're featuring this movie:

https://my.upfaithandfamily.com/christmas-oranges

Now that you've got me thinking about Christmas oranges, I'm going to watch it this weekend.

Oh God, there goes her free time.      

Quote from: Solar on December 11, 2021, 04:36:18 AMOh God, there goes her free time.      

My work here is done. 

Quote from: Grammy on December 11, 2021, 03:03:31 AM@Solars Toy

We always did, even way down in Louisiana.  Oranges, maybe an apple, that hard ribbon candy and some sort of gumdrop thing that tasted as if it had cloves in it. 

I haven't watched this yet, but I subscribe to UP Faith and Family channel for like $5.00 a month and they're featuring this movie:

https://my.upfaithandfamily.com/christmas-oranges

Now that you've got me thinking about Christmas oranges, I'm going to watch it this weekend.

I have dumped Hallmark so maybe.....  Toy 

There is one Christmas tradition I don't understand, and perhaps one of the geniuses who post here can enlighten me....

WTF is the deal with "The Wizard of Oz?"

I like the movie, and have liked it since I was a kid growing up in Dayton, Ohio, back in the late 1950s/early 1960s. I even read the novel just for shits and giggles. I did kitchen popcorn duty for years as a kid on that magic evening every December when one of the three TV networks decided to air it.
I'll even admit to having a bit of a crush for a little while on the perpetually overwrought teenage Judy Garland.

But... how the hell did "The Wizard of Oz" become associated with Christmas?

Quote from: TboneAgain on December 15, 2021, 07:14:54 PMThere is one Christmas tradition I don't understand, and perhaps one of the geniuses who post here can enlighten me....

WTF is the deal with "The Wizard of Oz?"

I like the movie, and have liked it since I was a kid growing up in Dayton, Ohio, back in the late 1950s/early 1960s. I even read the novel just for shits and giggles. I did kitchen popcorn duty for years as a kid on that magic evening every December when one of the three TV networks decided to air it.
I'll even admit to having a bit of a crush for a little while on the perpetually overwrought teenage Judy Garland.

But... how the hell did "The Wizard of Oz" become associated with Christmas?

I'm guessing that might be a local thing, here it was always around Halloween. And yeah, still one of my favorites.

Quote from: TboneAgain on December 15, 2021, 07:14:54 PMBut... how the hell did "The Wizard of Oz" become associated with Christmas?

Wizard of Oz was shown in Philly in the wintertime, but I don't associate it with a particular holiday.
On the other hand, a Bell Telephone Marionette 2 part special aired every Christmas.  The first part was "Twas The Night Before Christmas,". The second part was "The Nativity Story."

 They were pure magic. It disappeared from TV because the films were actually lost...until I was in my 50's and Bell Labs were cleaning out their vaults and found film canisters.  They had no clue what they were for, until someone got ahold of an old-time projector.  Somehow our local
PBS Station, channel 12 got ahold of them and used them for fundraising night.  You should have seen those phone lines light up.  I wasn't the only one to have cherished memories of those marionettes!  PBS made a killing on it.

Thanksgiving night was The Sound of Music.

Oh my gosh, I found it on YouTube.
It was made in 1950, but Bell did not Copywrite it until 1966. It is shown in color, but I saw it in black/white in the 1950s.

This is Twas the Night Before Christmas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OB0Lf5CKDM

This is part 1 of The Nativity Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXCNTW2glEw

and part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD1sCa5pBLo

"The Wizard of Oz," at least in the early days of TV, was NEVER licensed for broadcast to local or regional TV outlets. It was a network property, with CBS carrying it exclusively for many years.

The film was first broadcast in 1956. I was born in 1955. The early schedule for broadcasts looks like this:

QuoteEastern Time (taken from TV Guide and The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History).

1956 - CBS - Saturday, November 3 - 9:00 p.m.
The film's first showing on television. It was shown in color although very few people owned color TV sets. This marked the only time it was aired that late on a non-cable television network (Turner Broadcasting frequently schedules two showings in a row on the same night, at 8:00 p.m. and 10:15 p.m.). Future showings began earlier in order to allow children to see it more easily. In addition, the prime time hour generally given to affiliates for local programming was taken back in order to run the movie early. This practice continued until the film was sold to NBC.
1959 - CBS - Sunday, December 13 - 6:00 p.m.
The first of the film's annual showings. It was the success of this telecast, which gained a wider audience than the first, that persuaded CBS to make the film an annual tradition on television.
1960 - CBS - Sunday, December 11 - 6:00 p.m.
1961 - CBS - Sunday, December 10 - 6:00 p.m. - Only time fully shown in Black & White
1962 - CBS - Sunday, December 9 - 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 16 in Hawaii - 5:00 p.m.
1964 - CBS - Sunday, January 26 - 6:00 p.m.
The reason that the film did not air in December 1963 has never been stated, but some say that it was because of John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963; others say room needed to be made for more Christmas themed specials and that the movie fit in better during January. The movie continued to air early in the year rather than late in the year from 1964 until the 1990s.
1965 - CBS - Sunday, January 17 - 6:00 p.m.
1966 - CBS - Sunday, January 9 - 6:00 p.m.
1967 - CBS - Sunday, February 12 - 6:00 p.m.
Last airing on CBS until 1976. Moved to NBC in 1968, at this time, the showings were moved from midwinter to late winter/early spring.

It isn't difficult to see why I came to associate the movie with the holiday season, especially from 1959-1962. It is very likely that the pre-Christmas tradition would have carried on after 1962 if not for the assassination of JFK in late November 1963. Keep in mind that the movie was not shown on TV anywhere at any other time during that era. There was no streaming video, no DVDs, no VHS, no cable, no satellites, no nothing in the way of packaged video.

Since 1999, the Turner conglomerate (who owns the rights to the film), including TCM, TBS, and TNT, has focused its showings during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, with occasional showings around Independence Day.

Quote from: TboneAgain on December 15, 2021, 07:14:54 PMThere is one Christmas tradition I don't understand, and perhaps one of the geniuses who post here can enlighten me....

WTF is the deal with "The Wizard of Oz?"

I like the movie, and have liked it since I was a kid growing up in Dayton, Ohio, back in the late 1950s/early 1960s. I even read the novel just for shits and giggles. I did kitchen popcorn duty for years as a kid on that magic evening every December when one of the three TV networks decided to air it.
I'll even admit to having a bit of a crush for a little while on the perpetually overwrought teenage Judy Garland.

But... how the hell did "The Wizard of Oz" become associated with Christmas?

While we're asking these kinds of questions, when did Christmas become about Hallmark romance movies?   

Quote from: Grammy on December 18, 2021, 03:11:37 PMWhile we're asking these kinds of questions, when did Christmas become about Hallmark romance movies? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_Before_Christmas_(2015_film)

 

Quote from: Grammy on December 18, 2021, 03:11:37 PMWhile we're asking these kinds of questions, when did Christmas become about Hallmark romance movies? 

Hallmark sold out to the Marxist movement, but they never gave up on procuring money under the capitalist system. As long as there are gullible people willing to overlook the damage they're doing to American Culture, they'll keep churning out Xmas movies made in Canada..

Quote from: Sick Of Silence on December 18, 2021, 03:20:24 PMhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_Before_Christmas_(2015_film)

 

There ya go!  Classic example.  One of 5 probable Hallmark plots.  The most annoying one is:  roll in with some bouncy Christmas jazz, big city, girl walking with a purposeful stride, smiling at anyone or anything in her orbit, stuffing some cash into Santa's kettle, stopping by the coffee kiosk where, apparently, there's never a line and the barista just happens to know how she takes her coffee and hands it to her, along with an extra because of course, she's going to waltz into her very important office with a coffee for her very capable assistant, be told that she's "the best" then, after a quick back-and-forth with Mr. Whatever, goes to dinner with her boyfriend, fully expecting him to propose but, instead, he tells her that he's taking a job in "Bigger City" and that their relationship is just "not working".

Crushed, she decides  that she is going to spend Christmas in her hometown after all (it's been years!) so she dutifully heads off only to learn that the family B&B (substitute Christmas tree farm, diner, ranch, etc.) is about to be swooped up by a big developer but she.... yes, she....  can save it!  That is, as long as she doesn't become distracted by "Brad, Paul, Michael, David" (or whatever her old high school boyfriend's name is who was supposed to go with her after graduation to the big city but changed his mind and she has never forgiven him.  (Of course, she finds out that he couldn't go with her because his dad had just "lost his job, had to have serious surgery, died" (pick one) and he just didn't want to "hold her back" because all he ever wanted was for her to be happy. Of course, all is forgiven, and they are suddenly thrown together because he is going to use his law degree (that he earned working his way through law school at the local mill) to help her and together they save the B&B (substitute Christmas tree farm, diner, ranch, etc.) but not before City Girl's boyfriend just appears out of nowhere because his job offer in "Bigger City" fell through and he was wrong and she's all he ever wanted. Brad, Paul, Michael, David" (or whatever her old high school boyfriend's name is) walks in on this and turns to go, thereby creating the knee-jerk overreaction that always presents itself just before the final block of commercials but don't worry.  After the commercials, they all come back and fix everything in the last two minutes of the movie, have a big kiss, camera pulls away and !BLAMMO!  Another Hallmark Christmas movie is in the can!  (Or it should be.) 

Quote from: Grammy on December 18, 2021, 04:55:59 PMThere ya go!  Classic example.  One of 5 probable Hallmark plots.  The most annoying one is:  roll in with some bouncy Christmas jazz, big city, girl walking with a purposeful stride, smiling at anyone or anything in her orbit, stuffing some cash into Santa's kettle, stopping by the coffee kiosk where, apparently, there's never a line and the barista just happens to know how she takes her coffee and hands it to her, along with an extra because of course, she's going to waltz into her very important office with a coffee for her very capable assistant, be told that she's "the best" then, after a quick back-and-forth with Mr. Whatever, goes to dinner with her boyfriend, fully expecting him to propose but, instead, he tells her that he's taking a job in "Bigger City" and that their relationship is just "not working".

Crushed, she decides  that she is going to spend Christmas in her hometown after all (it's been years!) so she dutifully heads off only to learn that the family B&B (substitute Christmas tree farm, diner, ranch, etc.) is about to be swooped up by a big developer but she.... yes, she....  can save it!  That is, as long as she doesn't become distracted by "Brad, Paul, Michael, David" (or whatever her old high school boyfriend's name is who was supposed to go with her after graduation to the big city but changed his mind and she has never forgiven him.  (Of course, she finds out that he couldn't go with her because his dad had just "lost his job, had to have serious surgery, died" (pick one) and he just didn't want to "hold her back" because all he ever wanted was for her to be happy. Of course, all is forgiven, and they are suddenly thrown together because he is going to use his law degree (that he earned working his way through law school at the local mill) to help her and together they save the B&B (substitute Christmas tree farm, diner, ranch, etc.) but not before City Girl's boyfriend just appears out of nowhere because his job offer in "Bigger City" fell through and he was wrong and she's all he ever wanted. Brad, Paul, Michael, David" (or whatever her old high school boyfriend's name is) walks in on this and turns to go, thereby creating the knee-jerk overreaction that always presents itself just before the final block of commercials but don't worry.  After the commercials, they all come back and fix everything in the last two minutes of the movie, have a big kiss, camera pulls away and !BLAMMO!  Another Hallmark Christmas movie is in the can!  (Or it should be.) 

 

I only pointed it out because it stars my favorite left-ish Liberal (Mayim Bialik). She's Jewish and she is the main character in a Christmas movie.