I grew up in California but my parents did not and I got an orange, an apple, nuts in the shell and Christmas ribbon candy (not wrapped) in my stocking. Both my parents are gone I would like to ask them where, or why the tradition started. I'll have to ask my older siblings if they remember the fruit and nuts before we moved to california.
I remember one year I was maybe 9- or 10 mom had a very old very traditional fruit cake recipe, we knew it was going to make a large amount by the sheer number of ingredients and amounts but we had no idea that we had nothing big enough to mix it in......had to go to the store twice to buy baby bathtubs to have something big enough. I swear it took us 3 days to bake all of those cakes.