How mandarins became a holiday stocking staple

DELANO, Calif. — As Christmas legend goes, Old Saint Nick once visited the home of a poor father and his three unmarried daughters. To help them th...

December 27, 2022
5:10 AM

DELANO, Calif. — As Christmas legend goes, Old Saint Nick once visited the home of a poor father and his three unmarried daughters. To help them through hard times, Santa put gold balls into the daughters' stockings, which were drying on the fireplace. In honor of the legend, many parents began gifting oranges or mandarins instead of gold balls. Today, many continue the citrus gifting tradition and many of those mandarins come from the Wonderful Halos fruit packing plant off Highway 99 in Delano, California.

John Bartell