You’ll really earn your stripes if you help us celebrate today’s food holiday. December 26 is National Candy Cane Day!
Candy canes are cane-shaped hard candy sticks that are traditionally white with red stripes and peppermint flavored, though nowadays different variations exist. There are a lot of false reports about how candy canes are religious symbols, with the colors representing blood and purity, the three red stripes symbolizing the Holy Trinity, and the shape itself, a letter “J” when inverted, standing for Jesus, but while these stories sound plausible – especially given the candy cane’s association with Christmas – they simply aren’t true. In reality, candy canes were the invention of the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany in 1670. Bothered by the noise caused by children attending his Christmas Eve services, the choirmaster enlisted the aid of a local candy maker to create a peppermint stick to shut the heathens up keep the children preoccupied. Since he was giving them away during church services, he had the candy maker bend them into the shape of a shepherd’s hook to remind the kids about Jesus. Perhaps that’s where the other, more elaborate stories originated! Candy canes were traditionally all white until the turn of the 20th century, when stripes began to appear.
Because Christmas just passed, we had candy canes on hand. Celebrating this holiday was a breeze!
Related articles
- The Sweet Connection Between Candy and Christmas (business2community.com)
- Candy Canes (mangosalute.com)
- Candy Canes (sandraespinetblog.com)
- The Origin of the Candy Cane (gizmodo.com)
Eat My Words 
I just don’t have the patience to suck on a candy cane.
Much like a sucker.
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I’ll admit, after ten minutes I was done. Even if the candy cane was not.
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