What Candy Canes Symbolize And Why They're All Over Christmas

It's a tale of two peppermint candies. Starlight mints are relegated to the status of old-timey candy doomed to gather dust in a dish of other hard candies that haven't been touched in decades while candy canes, which taste exactly the same, are ubiquitous for around six weeks out of each year. We're not sure how many people actually eat candy canes on their own, but they're certainly popular as a flavor, ingredient, or decoration. Trader Joe's holiday Fearless Flyers feature candy cane-flavored items from popcorn to cookies to marshmallows, while light-up candy canes make even driveways look festive. 

How is it that peppermint candy canes took over the holiday season instead of sharing the ignominious predicament of their Starlight siblings? We don't know for sure, but the phenomenon seems more rooted in 20th-century manufacturing and marketing than spiritual symbolism. In fact, one popular legend about the candy cane's origin may be just so much reindeer poop.

As some would have it, candy canes were invented in Indiana by a spiritually-minded candy maker who wanted to create a confection shaped like a 'J' for Jesus with white and red stripes that would respectively symbolize purity and the blood of Christ. This cute Christmas story makes a great basis for a Sunday school holiday craft project, but as an actual theory it doesn't wash. The candy canes occasionally depicted on 19th-century Christmas cards were pure white, so red stripes were a later addition. It also seems likely that hook-shaped candy sticks predated the supposed invention by several centuries.

Another candy cane origin story may be somewhat closer to the mark. As this story goes, they were created by a 17th-century German choirmaster who wanted to keep his choirboys from talking during the Christmas solemnities. (The phrase "innocent as a choirboy" has caused many a choral director to choke on their laughter over the years.) The crook shape, it is said, was meant to remind them of the shepherd's crook that Jesus is sometimes depicted as carrying rather than warning of corporal punishment that might be in store. While candy sticks do date back to the 1600s, it's more likely that the hook was meant to allow them to be hung on trees as a decoration. This does speak to German origins since Germans started decorating trees for the holiday season a century before that.

All we know for sure (or sure-ish, food history not always being as well-documented as we'd like) is that the first references to cane-shaped candy sticks dates to 1847 when a German-Swedish immigrant living in Ohio used them to decorate a small pine tree. The candies didn't immediately catch on, but by the 1920s, a Georgia confectioner was making them to sell as Christmas treats. As this could only be done by hand at the time and stripe-twisting took a lot of effort, the canes wouldn't have been very affordable. By the 1950s, however, the process was automated and thus began the era of candy cane Christmastime ubiquity.