PARENTS will be given a healthy treat by a Bradford supermarket in a bid to revive a Christmas tradition.

Morrisons will hand out 200,000 oranges to parents at its stores across the country tomorrow and encouraging them to tell the story behind it ahead of Christmas Eve.

A survey commissioned by the supermarket giant found 79 per cent of British parents quizzed said they no longer put oranges in their children’s Christmas stockings.

Morrisons’ oranges will be wrapped in Christmas tissue paper with a story-card telling the history of the tradition. The tradition can be traced back to a story about Father Christmas who dropped three gold coins down a poor family’s chimney for them to find in the morning. They landed in the children’s socks which were hanging by the fire to dry.

Anna Lane, head of customer experience at Morrisons, said: “Like kissing under the mistletoe and putting out carrots for Rudolph, oranges in stockings is part of the magic of Christmas. We want to help keep these traditions alive and help parents pass on the stories behind them to their children.”