I was a greedy little kid at Christmas. I really was. I had a recurring pre-Christmas nightmare that I wouldn’t get any of the good stuff on my Santa Claus list. My father never tired of reminding me that a pen knife and an orange constituted a big Christmas-morning haul in his youth, but he enjoyed playing Santa for my little brother and me almost as much as we enjoyed receiving the bounty. Fruit, particularly citrus, was a big part of our Christmas because of my father. He made sure we had oranges, tangerines and English walnuts available. It meant Christmas to him, probably because it was about the only time of the year he experienced such treats in the Depression-era home where he was raised. His boyhood nickname was “Scrooge.” Why, I will never know. However, if you are at all a student of Charles Dickens you know the name was quite appropriate: he kept Christmas better than anyone.

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