When I was a boy, my family regularly attended the Christmas Eve program at church. As everyone filed out, Santa Claus handed red and white Christmas stockings to all of us children. Among the candy canes, chocolate bells and peanut clusters would be an orange.
I used to wonder why an orange was in each stocking. Oranges weren’t rare. You could get one any time, but certain kinds of candy were a treat because you could only get them at Christmas. Perhaps the orange hearkened back to an earlier time when an orange was a special treat as well.
There used to be a time when citrus fruit was a rare commodity in northern climates. You really knew you had something special when you had an orange. In times past sailors developed scurvy for lack of oranges, limes and lemons and the valuable vitamin C they provide.
When I see an orange, I can’t help but think it came from a different part of the world. I peel and eat the orange, knowing it’s not natural for me to have it in a temperate climate zone. But I’m grateful because I wouldn’t have it without the progress our society has made in the past two hundred years or so.
We take things for granted today with our globalization, which brings fruits like grapes from Chile regularly. But what if there comes a time when grapes and oranges aren’t available so readily?
I can’t tell you precisely what will bring that about. It could be economic collapse. It could be infrastructure failures that don’t permit shipping by air or truck. It could be an EMP that dramatically changes everything.
How well prepared are you to survive in a time when once again having an orange in the middle of winter will be a rare treat?