Around the same time candy canes seem to have gotten their crook (and in the same region this seems to have first happened, Germany) many other food items started to be used to decorate Christmas trees (like cookies, fruits, candies, and other such things). (This is also why they are so closely associated with Christmas today).

It could just as well have been the case, and seems slightly more plausible, that candy canes got the crook end simply as it made them easier to hang on a tree. And, certainly, the practice didn’t catch on elsewhere, as the nativity scene reenactment was popular all over the place (starting in the 13th century) and nobody else seemed to think there was a need for giving the kids candy during Mass to get them to shut up, at least there isn’t record of it. It also seems questionable that candy would be allowed in such a service. But that’s hardly direct evidence that the story is true. Starting around the 15th century, the church officially banned live reenactments of the nativity scene, something that had been previously extremely popular, so any such scene that involved a minister or choirmaster and took place in the Cologne Cathedral in the 17th century, would have been a static scene so a little boring for kids to look at, as perhaps would be the Mass itself. Given that it has been a time honored church tradition to try to associate as many Christmas season traditions’ “origin stories” as possible with Christianity, usually just for symbolism’ sake but often getting morphed into being believed as fact, color me skeptical on this one. Now, maybe some kindly old priest really did this, we just don’t have any real evidence but the story itself. None of them, however, go so far as to give any direct evidence to support it. This makes a nice story, but there simply isn’t much of any evidence to back it up either, other than it is a long standing tradition often repeated by otherwise reputable sources.

He would then give these shepherd staff candies to children to keep them quite during the traditional Christmas Eve Nativity scene reenactment / Christmas Eve Mass. As to how these straight sticks became bent into a J shape, there is a legend that this was done by a choirmaster in Cologne Cathedral in the late 17th century in order to symbolize a shepherd’s staff. White, hard sugar sticks have been a fairly common confectionery for centuries. So what’s the real candy cane story? Well, there isn’t a lot we can say for sure. We just need to stop short of calling it fact, which sadly seems to not happen very often with these sorts of stories. Rogers one and only even slightly scandalous, with an emphasis on “slightly,” thing he ever seems to have done was that for most of his adult life he swam naked daily at certain pools that allowed it.)īut back to the topic at hand, there simply isn’t any evidence to support any of the above, though of course there’s nothing wrong with creating such symbolism around existing traditions. Rogers use to frequent that allowed nude swimming. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister was never in the military and anyone wanting evidence of his lack of any tattoos need only talk to someone at swim clubs Mr.

military and always wore long sleeve sweaters to cover all the tattoos on his arms and chest, one for each person he killed. While that makes a great candy cane origin story, there is about as much evidence to back this up as there is supporting the myth that Mr. The white base color of the candy cane symbolizes Jesus’ purity the red stripes symbolize Jesus’ blood when he died on the cross and the J shape was chosen to represent the J in Jesus. Milly asks: Where did candy canes originally come from and how did they get associated with Christmas?įirst, let’s start by dispelling a somewhat popular myth that more or less goes like this:

Now and later candy canes