
I have an important tradition I like to uphold: every winter storm, I like to eat citrus fruit. Sumo oranges are typical, but lemons and limes will suffice too. I started this tradition when I was a visiting scholar at Syracuse University. Being in Central New York and close to Lake Ontario, winter storms happen. A lot. It starts snowing in October and doesn’t stop until May. Temperatures plummet and the wind sucks the very soul from your body. Mab, the Fairy Queen of Winter, rules supreme there for a good portion of the year.
Despite winter’s icy grip, citrus is plentiful. Walk into any grocery store, and you will find mountains of fresh, high quality citrus. Indeed, because of the Alchian-Allen Effect, these citrus are often of higher quality in New York than they are in Florida! And so, whenever a storm was predicted, I’d get some citrus, snuggle up with my cat, and enjoy watching the storm howl from my window, safe and warm from the Winter Queen’s wrath (pictured below is the view from my apartment in one such storm).
Of course, some readers may dismiss my story here as commonplace. True. But that is exactly the point! The fact that tropical fruits, unknown to Central New York for millennia, are commonplace even in the dead of winter is a miracle. It is a miracle of human cooperation: Sumo oranges, developed in Japan, grown in Florida (or some other tropical location), picked and transported thousands of miles to an icy climate just so little ol’ me could enjoy them. Untold multitudes spanning the globe coordinating with each other. And it is commonplace! Thanks not to the central or industrial plans of some ideologue who thinks he knows what’s best, but due to the invisible hand of the market.
So, to celebrate this miracle, I enjoy oranges whenever there is a winter storm. Ever since I moved to Louisiana, those celebrations have been significantly more limited. But as I write this, a significant storm is set to hit (“significant” for the area. 3-5 inches of snow predicted in an area that gets a coating of snow once a decade). But traditions must be upheld. I have a Sumo orange waiting for me; a sweet, citrusy defense against Winter’s wrath.
Update: we actually got 8 inches of snow. Close to a foot in other parts of the state.
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jan 28 2025 at 8:25pm
“The fact that tropical fruits, unknown to Central New York for millennia, are commonplace even in the dead of winter is a miracle. ”
I agree, honestly the one example that I like to point out, being just slightly smarter than a gorilla, are bananas which are plentiful all year and dirt cheap.
“higher quality in New York than they are in Florida”
Now you’re just talking nonsense, Murphy! 😉
KT
Jan 29 2025 at 6:59am
So, here in New York State, I can travel over ice covered roads (thanks to the Buy American Salt Act and the resulting shortage of road salt) and make my way into Wegmans or Tops and purchase high quality citrus (thanks to globalization, trade, and the market). A very instructive economics lesson!
David Seltzer
Jan 29 2025 at 10:43am
KT: I empathize, having grown up in the middle of the snow bucket in NW Indiana. We continued to enjoy our Florida grapefruit by purchasing in anticipation of heavy snows and twenty below zero cold. Just sayin.
Ron Browning
Jan 29 2025 at 7:49am
Jon: Here is a winter storm tradition that I stumbled upon years ago, accidentally, that I reluctantly, occasionally, follow when the temperature drops near zero. A contrived way to experience this is to walk to a park when the temperature drops to zero or below. Sit down on the park bench and wait. Wait until you are so cold that your body is out of control and you literally become panicked. Panicked because you are shivering out of control and there is no relief anywhere near. You are shivering so much that you are not sure if you can make it to safety. When you reach that state of panic, make your way back to safety.
The reason to experience this is to reinvigorate a sense of empathy that cannot be properly developed from the warmth of one’s home. This is a cheap, easy, painful way to understand firsthand, the panic that many experience on a daily basis. Smith’s most consistent theme in “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, I find, to be empathy. This sentiment seems to be consistently absent in our modern society.
I am in no way implying that you lack empathy.
Jon Murphy
Jan 29 2025 at 7:59am
I would do that on a daily basis waiting for my bus in Syracuse 🙂
Joking aside, I like your idea. Empathy for those with no shelter from the storm.
I didn’t think you were, but I appreciate the sentiment.
I agree. I’d even go a step further and argue that many see empathy, especially with the “wrong” person or group, as a weakness and moral deficiency.
Knut P. Heen
Jan 29 2025 at 10:02am
We had one meter of snow here around New Year. Then the temperature climbed 15C in two days and everything disappeared. I wonder how we will adapt to a temperature change of 1.5C in 100 years.
David Seltzer
Jan 29 2025 at 10:48am
Knut: We live in the foot hills of the North Georgia mountains. On Monday, four inches of snow covered the everything. Two days later, Wednesday, temps were sixty degrees. the snow was gone and local creeks handled to run off. No worries mate.
Craig
Jan 29 2025 at 11:59am
I love Lookout Mountain which straddles GA/TN line. Civil War monuments and battlefield (highest altitude battle in Civil War) with panorama of Chattanooga, Ruby Falls and Rock City (they claim you can see seven states from there, but I did the math and there’s no way you can see the top of any mountain in VA from there even if we presume that interceding mountains did not exist and we presume the single tallest mountain in the Apalachains is sitting on the VA/TN line, that mountain would STILL be below the horizon from where one is at in GA), but when the myth becomes legend print the legend, I suppose.
David Seltzer
Jan 29 2025 at 12:37pm
Craig, I’ve been to Lookout Mountain several times. Love it. Some years ago, I climbed Mt Rainier. At the summit one could see Mt Shasta, Mt Adams and Mt St Helens.
Jon Murphy
Jan 29 2025 at 11:43am
Oh yeah. My 8 inches was gone about 4 days later
Warren Platts
Jan 29 2025 at 12:34pm
When we were little, my mother would always put an orange in our Christmas stockings. My brothers and I are like, “WHY?” because we could get oranges anytime we wanted. But I guess when she was a little girl, getting a single orange in the middle of winter was a big, relatively expensive, deal and quite a treat to get. Hence the tradition…
Jon Murphy
Jan 29 2025 at 12:47pm
Same here. Citrus was a luxury for centuries. Thanks to globalization, that tradition is now quaint.
Warren Platts
Jan 29 2025 at 3:55pm
That was Mom’s way of saying to us, “You boys need to realize how lucky you are to be living in the tail end of the 20th century. Things were not so flush back in the so-called good old days.” It was a tradition I continued with my own offspring.
And speaking of my late mother and the Alchian-Allen Effect, she used to enjoy the occasional glass of Dry Sack Spanish sherry. As a result, I acquired the same taste. So when I graduated from college, my girlfriend and I traveled to Europe and Spain. I thought, “This is going to be great!” getting to sample all the wonderful Spanish sherry wines. It turned out that the sherry for sale within Spain itself was all crap! The locals didn’t even drink it, and looked at us if we asked about it like “Why would you want it?” Maybe they use it for cooking. But for sure, all the good stuff gets exported!
Craig
Jan 30 2025 at 9:00am
My great grandmother would admonish us to save the gift wrapping paper in the 1970s to reuse the following year.
The discussion on oranges made me be reminded of a Seinfeld eoisode where Seinfeld/George hear Japanese like citrus as a luxury since it costs alot there so they bring oranges to the meetings, but the Japanese execs are bewildered asking, in Japanese, “Why do they keep bringing oranges to the meetings?”
José Pablo
Jan 30 2025 at 11:17am
“Thanks not to the central or industrial plans of some ideologue who thinks he knows what’s best“
Despite the efforts of the ideologue and his voters to jeopardize the whole system because “strategic reasons”, “national security issues”, “trade deficits” obsessions, acute attacks of “make vs buy bias” …
I wouldn’t take your citrus for granted … although the invisible hand seems to be incredibly resilient
Jon Murphy
Jan 30 2025 at 11:38am
Agreed. As Adam Smith says: “There is much ruin in a nation.”
One of these reasons I like to do these celebrations of the mundane is so we do not take them for granted.
Henry
Jan 30 2025 at 1:39pm
The production of oranges in Florida has declined 16% this past year. Citrus greening disease has had a big impact. Before the availability of the global network described in the article, cabbage was the source of vitamin C and A in the winter in the colder regions. Sauerkraut in Europe and kimchi in Korea are examples. International trade also allows transmission of disease.
Jon Murphy
Jan 30 2025 at 5:33pm
Yes. Another reason to love globalization: we don’t have to eat sauerkraut or cabbage for vitamin c now.
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