A Candy Cane for Christmas

I love candy canes. Not only are they fun to use as decorations, I love their peppermint flavor in hot chocolates, coffee, and cookies and baked treats. But they’re not just a sweet candy that brightens the tree and cookie dough. Candy canes, which have been around for at least 350 years, have a long, interesting history.

These white sugar sticks, which took a lot of time and work to make, were originally given to children during the long Christmas Eve mass to help keep them quiet. The color white symbolized the purity of the Virgin’s birth and the piety of the characters showcased in nativity scenes. White represented the truth that Christ was sinless from the moment of birth to the moment of his death, and the candy’s hardness symbolizes the church, which is the rock of the Christian faith.

In 1670, the shape of this candy changed when a choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral in Germany wanted to honor his bishop with a candy in the shape of a shepherd’s staff. The shepherd’s staff is a Christian symbol for Jesus Christ as the good shepherd. And when you turn it upside down, the “J” shape of the candy stands for Jesus’s name. (The story about this choirmaster may be apocraphyl, but I’m sharing it anyway because it’s charming. :))

It wasn’t until 1847 that peppermint flavor was added to the candy, and that candy canes were first used to decorate Christmas trees. Christmas trees had been around for a long time, often being burned for weeks on end as a Yule Log. But in the 19th century, August Imgard, a German-Swedish immigrant from Wooster, Ohio, decorated an indoor Christmas tree with paper ornaments and peppermint candy canes. Since peppermint is a natural rodent deterrent, people began hanging candy canes on their live Christmas trees after bringing them inside their homes. They hoped that the candy canes would prevent creatures from seeking out their inside trees.

In the early 20th century, the color changed from a solid white to the white and red stripes we see now. These red stripes represent the plight of Jesus during his crucifixion and the blood he shed on the cross. Then, in the 1920’s in Atlanta, Bob McCormack, who owned The Famous Candy Company, was the first to give candy canes as Christmas gifts. But it wasn’t until the 1950’s that candy canes surged in popularity. And that popularity was due to a machine that was designed to automate candy cane production.

Up until 1950, candy canes were a ton of work to make but after Gregory Keller (Bob McCormack’s brother-in-law and a Catholic priest) invented a candy cane-making machine, candy canes became a commodity that could be distributed worldwide. This machine, known as the Keller Machine, was in use for over 80 years, and the Famous Candy Company changed its name to Bob’s Candies. Now candy canes are mass produced, using a similar machine to the Keller Machine, with the main difference being that the candy is covered with cellophane before they’re bent into their “J”shape. Not long ago, Bob’s Candies Company was bought by the Farley and Sathers Candy Company, and they still sell Bob’s original candy canes.