Day 3 – Christmas Candy Canes
“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;” Ephesians 1:7
The first recorded ‘candy stick’ comes from 1837 at an exhibition in Massachusetts in the USA.
They started as straight white sugar sticks and a few years later the red stripes were added.
In 1866, they were first labeled as “candy canes.” Then in 1874, they became connected to Christmas. Earlier recipes were just sugar-flavored. Nowadays they come in so many flavors although primarily peppermint or wintergreen.
Around 1920, Bob McCormack, from Georgia, started making canes for his friends and family. They became more and more popular and he started his own business called Bob’s Candies.
Bob McCormack’s brother-in-law, Gregory Harding Keller, who was a Catholic priest, invented the ‘Keller Machine’ that made turning straight candy sticks into curved candy canes automatically! This changed the straight shape to what we see today as a cane shaped.
In 2005, Bob’s Candies was bought by Farley and Sathers but they still make candy canes.
Legend has it that German a choirmaster, in 1670, was worried about the children sitting quietly all through the long Christmas nativity service. So, he gave them something to eat to keep them quiet. As he wanted to remind them of Christmas, he made them into a ‘J’ shape like a shepherd’s crook, to remind them of the shepherds that visited the baby Jesus at the first Christmas.
We also have developed the candy cane into a way to share Christ’s birth with others.
One thought on “Christmas Candy Canes”