International Christmas: The Apple Fairy

Children in the past often received as special Christmas gifts food which we think of as "everyday" now: oranges, apples, grapes, bananas, nuts, raisins. In these days when foods can be shipped everywhere so that we have strawberries in December and root vegetables in May, it is difficult to imagine a time when food had to be eaten in its season from local sources, but on holidays rare foods—walnuts, cranberries, fresh oranges, figs, lemons, and other "exotic" items were stocked in groceries at great cost and markup. Some foods like oranges and raisins were eaten only at Christmas or other holidays, shipped in from California or Florida and people often saved up for months or weeks to buy an orange for each child and procure a small box of raisins for a plum pudding—and raisins in those days did not come pitted and had to be "stoned" before inclusion in a cake or muffin. Children who wanted raisin cake would have to do the work of pitting them before Mother or Grandmother could bake it. The same children waited all year long to taste their "Christmas orange."

Apples were a bit more common because they could be stored in straw in an attic or root cellar and eaten after the harvest and through the winter if kept in a cool enough place. Some apples might be cored, sliced, and dried, and a treat for a February night might be dried apple slices, or the same apple slices reconstituted in an apple pie. Red apples made perfect Christmas tree ornaments as well; dotted in with the gingerbread boys, popcorn strings, and home-made cornucopias, the red was cheerful and jolly. In Europe, baked apples were a traditional Advent treat.

The apple tradition goes back many years. In medieval times Christmas Eve was know as Adam and Eve's day, and, although apples are not native to the Middle Eastern area where the Garden of Eden was supposed to be, tradition has always held the forbidden fruit to be an apple. Apples were hung on what was called a "Paradise Tree" and the fall of Adam and Eve was acted out on a stage.

Our apple fairy above looks like an early representation of one of the European gift-bringers, the Christkindlein, or Christ Child, who is not portrayed as an infant, but as a young woman with golden hair.