The Origins Of How Candy Canes Became A Christmas Tradition

Candy canes are perhaps the most versatile symbol of the festive season, functioning both as decorative objects and one of many seasonal sweet treats, like peppermint hot chocolate and candy cane cookies. But how did these mint-flavored red-and-white striped sticks of hard candy turn into an icon of Christmas? Unfortunately, there's no simple answer. There are a lot of stories about where candy canes originated, but they're not well-documented, so it's hard to assess their truthfulness.

Let's start with the misconceptions: One popular story is that an Indiana candy-maker created the canes in a J shape (for "Jesus"), with the red and white symbolizing Jesus' blood and purity, respectively. This one is primarily suspect because key details, like the name of the candy-maker and even the timeframe when he invented them, are missing. Another version says that a German choirmaster created them in the 1600s, to placate choirboys during long Christmas masses. Here, the shape was intended to resemble a shepherd's crook, making them another symbol for Jesus. This one's also hard to believe since this story didn't appear until the mid-1900s, and records of candy canes in historic literature didn't appear until about 200 years after this story supposedly happened. Generally speaking, there isn't a whole lot of proof they were originally created explicitly as a religious symbol. Instead, it seems like candy canes evolved over time and slowly became a festive symbol.

Candy canes are a type of hard candy (candy made with boiled sugar and water) that has been around for centuries, but in the United States, candy didn't start getting popular until the late 1800s, after the Civil War, when sugar became a lot cheaper and more accessible. At that time, candy was considered a medicine, and pharmacies often used strong flavors like peppermint to cover up the taste of medicinal herbs. That's how peppermint crept into the equation. (Notably, this is different from the origin of another festive minty treat, peppermint bark.) 

At some point, sticks of hard, peppermint-flavored candy started getting their iconic bent shape. The reason is hard to pin down. One story is that a German immigrant started bending them to hang on trees around 1847, but the history of this story sometimes contradicts itself, mentioning other sweets and no canes. Candy canes didn't start appearing on the mass market until the mid-20th century, when the brother-in-law of a candy-maker in Albany, Georgia, devised a machine that could reliably bend hard candy into the cane shape without snapping it. The religious crossover likely occurred at this point, as this inventor was a Catholic priest. The red stripes also surfaced around the early 20th century, with some people crediting that same candy-maker, Bob McCormack, but there are suggestions that the stripes appeared earlier. Overall, no one person made the candy cane into a Christmas symbol. Rather, through technical innovations and sheer chance, it evolved that way over time.