Candy cane

History

A record of the 1837 exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, where confections were judged competitively, mentions "stick candy". A recipe for straight peppermint candy sticks, white with coloured stripes, was published in The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker, in 1844. However, the earliest documentation of a "candy cane" is found in the short story "Tom Luther's Stockings", published in Ballou's Monthly Magazine in 1866. Described as "mammoth" in size, no mention of colour or flavour was provided. The Nursery monthly magazine mentions "candy-canes" in association with Christmas in 1874, and Babyland magazine describes "tall, twisted candy canes" being hung on a Christmas tree in 1882.

Animal deterrent

Peppermint is a natural animal deterrent. It is believed that peppermint candy canes were originally hung on Christmas trees to keep rodents and other small animals, including cats, from damaging Christmas trees.

Religious affiliation

A common story of the origin of candy canes says that in 1670, in Cologne, Germany, the choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral, wishing to remedy the noise caused by children in his church during the Living Crèche tradition of Christmas Eve, asked a local candy maker for some "sugar sticks" for them. In order to justify the practice of giving candy to children during Mass, he asked the candy maker to add a crook to the top of each stick, which would help children remember the shepherds who visited the infant Jesus. This story is likely apocryphal, with references to it not existing before the mid-20th century.

Production

As with other forms of stick candy, the earliest canes were manufactured by hand. Chicago confectioners the Bunte Brothers filed one of the earliest patents for candy cane making machines in the early 1920s. Caneworking is a method used originally to create complex designs in long "canes" of glass, by which smaller rods are subsumed into larger rods and subsequently rolled into minute diameters while preserving the design. Examples of this are murrine and millefiori glass ornaments. While candy canes are often shaped into curved walking-style canes, it should be mentioned that the process by which they are made by hand is called, candy caning, or candy caneworking. It is fundamentally identical to glass canework, and caneworking is also used with clay polymer.

In 1919, in Albany, Georgia, Robert McCormack began making candy canes for local children and by the middle of the century, his company (originally the Famous Candy Company, then the Mills-McCormack Candy Company, and later Bobs Candies) had become one of the world's leading candy cane producers. Candy cane manufacturing initially required significant labour that limited production quantities; the canes had to be bent manually as they came off the assembly line to create their curved shape and breakage often ran over 20 percent. McCormack's brother-in-law, Gregory Harding Keller, was a seminary student in Rome who spent his summers working in the candy factory back home. In 1957, Keller, as an ordained Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Little Rock, patented his invention, the Keller Machine, which automated the process of twisting soft candy into spiral striping and cutting it into precise lengths as candy canes.

Use during Saint Nicholas Day

On Saint Nicholas Day celebrations, candy canes are given to children as they are also said to represent the crosier of the Christian bishop Saint Nicholas; crosiers allude to the Good Shepherd, a name sometimes used to refer to Jesus of Nazareth.

References

References

1. (1837). "First Exhibition and Fair of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, at Faneuil and Quincy Halls, in the City of Boston, September 18, 1837". Dutton and Wentworth, for the association.
2. Parkinson, Eleanor. (1844). "The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker". Lea and Blanchard.
3. Bates, M. A.. (January–June 1866). "Tom Luther's Stockings".
4. (1874). "Benny's Letter".
5. (January 1882). "Round the Christ-mas Tree".
6. Parker, Rick. (2003). "Introduction to Food Science". Delmar/Thomson Learning.
7. Haidle, Helen. (2007). "Christmas Legends to Remember". Honor Books.
8. Collins, Ace. (2003). "Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas". Zondervan.
9. (December 13, 1968). "It's Christmas Season: My, How Sweet It Is!". The Milwaukee Journal.
10. (2014). "Candy Bites: The Science of Sweets". Springer.
11. (December 7, 2000). "FACT CHECK: Did Candy Canes Originate as Religious Symbols?".
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