Few things say Christmas like a red-and-white candy cane hanging from a tree branch. That cheerful swirl of stripes feels like it has been around forever. But where did those stripes actually come from, and who decided candy should look like a shepherd's crook?
The short answer: as far as the records show, the stripes came first. Striped peppermint candy sticks were already around in the 1840s, before anyone wrote about a "candy cane." A recipe for straight peppermint sticks, white with colored stripes, was published in an 1844 cookbook. The hook shape and the Christmas connection came later, and nobody knows exactly who first gave the cane its famous red swirl.
From Barber Pole Candy to Christmas
The striped stick has a long history in the United States, where it's believed to have been developed. It's sometimes called barber pole candy, because the colors spiral around it like a barber's pole. Stick candy was shown at a Massachusetts exhibition as far back as 1837, and by the 1860s it was popular with children and adults alike.
An 1885 song even celebrated "the candy stick striped like a gay barber's pole," describing a child rushing to the corner store with every penny earned.
The earliest known mention of a "candy cane" appears in an 1866 magazine story, though it didn't mention color or flavor. By 1874, candy canes were being linked with Christmas, and in 1882 a children's magazine described "tall, twisted candy canes" hanging on a Christmas tree.
The Famous Legend
You may have heard a lovely story about where candy canes came from. In 1670, it goes, a choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral in Germany asked a candy maker for sugar sticks to keep children quiet during a Christmas Eve service. He had them bent into a crook to remind the children of the shepherds who visited baby Jesus, and their white color stood for purity.
It's a sweet tale, but it's likely made up. No references to it have been found before the mid-1900s. There's another theory that peppermint canes were hung on trees to keep rodents and even cats away, since peppermint can deter animals.
How the Swirl Became Easy
For a long time, candy canes were made by hand, using the same basic technique glassmakers use to create striped glass rods. In the early 1920s, Chicago's Bunte Brothers filed one of the earliest patents for a candy cane machine.
Then came a Georgia family business. In 1919, Robert McCormack of Albany, Georgia, started making candy canes for local children, and his company grew into one of the world's leading producers. Workers still had to bend the canes by hand, and more than 20 percent often broke.
The fix came from McCormack's brother-in-law, Gregory Harding Keller, a Catholic priest who had spent his summers working in the candy factory. In 1957, he patented the Keller Machine, which automated twisting the soft candy into spiral stripes and cutting it into precise lengths.
A Little Extra Meaning
On Saint Nicholas Day, candy canes are sometimes said to represent the curved staff of Saint Nicholas, a bishop. So whether you see a shepherd's crook, a bishop's staff, or just a tasty treat, those red stripes carry well over 150 years of American candy history. Not bad for something you can hang on a tree.
