Christmas is the festival of sweetness and love. All of us get excited about candy cane during Christmas. But do we know about the history of candy canes? Before you choose the best place to buy candy online, let us have a look at history.
The Legend of Candy Canes
According to the legend, during the 1670s, the choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral in Germany handed out sugar sticks amongst his young singers. He distributed those sugar sticks to them to keep them quiet during the long course of the Living Crèche Ceremony.
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As an honour to the occasion, he had those sugar sticks bent into Shepherds’ Crook to remind them of the shepherds who visited the baby Jesus at the first Christmas. Though this sounds very interesting, nobody knows how much truth this story holds.
The Origin Story
A German Swedish Immigrant named August Imgard of Wooster, Ohio, also has a role in this history. In 1847, he decorated small blue spruce with candy canes and paper ornaments. Another story that is also heard is about a candy maker in Indiana. He wanted to make a candy that would remind him of Jesus Christ. Thus he made the Christmas Candy Canes.
He first took the stick of pure white hard candy. In this, the pure white colour has a symbolic meaning. The pure white colour represented the virgin birth and sinless nature of Jesus Christ. The hard candy was used as a sign to indicate the foundation of the church. It also represented the firmness of the virtue and promises of God.
The candy was made into the shape of ‘J’. It was shaped to symbolize the first letter in the name of Jesus. Later the candy maker covered the pure white candy with three red stripes. These three red stripes represent and honour the bloodshed of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is to pay respect and tribute. He made the candy in this way to remind us that Jesus faced torment because of our sins. Thus, when one breaks the candy, it attributes how Jesus’ body was broken for us.
The First-Ever Candy Cane
However, the first recorded ‘candy stick’ is heard to have come from an exhibition in Massachusetts in 1837. It is claimed that they started it as straight white sugar sticks, and a few years later, the red stripes were added.
Initially, the candy cane was simply available in sugar flavour. But now, they are flavoured with peppermint or wintergreen. Many argue the peppermint flavour represents the hyssop plant, which is employed to purify the Bible. During the 1920s, it is heard that Bob McCormack from Georgia started making canes for his friends and family. He also soon started his own business of candy canes called Bob’s Candies. The massive turn in this business and the history of candy canes happened with the ‘Keller Machine’. Bob’s brother-in-law Gregory Harding Keller invented this machine, which, to everyone’s surprise, turns the straight candy sticks into curved candy canes automatically.
The festive season accompanied by winter is knocking at our doors. We all are craving chocolate and sweets. Make sure to choose the best place to buy candy online. Candy Heaven is your perfect destination. They have a huge colourful collection of chocolate products from across the globe.
