How’s the festive spirit? High, sir! With this kind of enthusiasm and cheer, I wait for Christmas every year. It is less than two weeks until Christmas and honestly, my excitement is uncontrollable. Part of the reason for my extraordinary zeal and passion for this festival is my school education. Although I wasn’t in a convent school, my principal and a lot of the faculty was Christian due to which we used to celebrate Christmas with a lot of fervour. The joy of singing Christmas carols every morning and waiting for Santa to arrive with gifts on the last day before the winter break are things that still make me nostalgic.
Keeping on with the spirits, I’ve made it a tradition to set up my Christmas tree in a corner of the living room every year. My sister and I take out the box of decorations, dusting off the year-old accumulated dirt and carefully examining each and every tiny piece of hanging. Then we pick our parts, she does the santas, I do the golden and silver balls, she twirls the snowman on a branch while I wrap the bells on another. Then comes our favourite time, and no it’s not the star on the top, it’s the candy cane. But was this candy cane always this vibrant and colourful?
The White Cane To The Colourful Candy
It is believed that candy was a pure and solid white until the 20th century. The candy was a great way to mask the unpleasant tasting drugs prescribed by doctors. At that time, several herbs were used for their medicinal purposes but their strong and unappetizing odour was a major put off. That’s when peppermint started being used to cover up for the smell of the drugs and the sugar sticks called peppermint candies became popular.
The first candies that were made, were straight in shape and not colourful, meant for treating nausea, sickness etc. It is the legend of 1670 which talks about candy canes as a quintessential Christmas thing. The bent-over J shaped canes appeared when a choirmaster in Germany lured his kids into maintaining silence with the help of white sugar sticks in the shape of candy canes. This seemed to have worked well on the kids of Cologne Cathedral during the Living Creche ceremony.
Following suit, the tradition was picked up across Europe and America but the first time it was used as a Christmas hanging was in the year 1847 by Wooster, a German-Swedish immigrant. That’s how it came to be associated with the festival. Finally, by the end of the 19th century, the candy canes acquired colourful stripes. The red and white stripes on the cane were considered to be symbolic of Jesus’s blood and the J shape was a reflection of shepherd’s crook or the letter J of Jesus.
It was Bob McCormack’s company which started mass-producing red and white candy canes in Atlanta and spread the festive cheer of Christmas. You might feel like biting into a candy cane now, so why wait? Try these sweetmeat candy cane recipes and enjoy the holiday season.
1.Candy Cane Bread
This will be a hit among the kids. Bake fruity and zesty bread with the flavours of currants, raisins or cranberries. Assemble it in the shape of a J. Sprinkle some white frosting over and drop in some colourful dried fruits to make it look like a candy cane.
2. Candy Cane Cookies
Once you look at these colourful cookies, you would totally feel like you’re having candy cane. The J-shaped white and red cookies can be held like a stick and eaten like a cookie too. Use red food colour and vanilla essence for the flavour and colour.
3. Candy Cane Popcorn Balls
You don’t need to pop in some popcorn directly with your hand. The candy cane can act as a holder and help you hold the popcorn balls while you drop them into your mouth. You can easily take a sweet and salty flavour by taking a bite of each of the two things one after the other.
4. Candy Cane Coffee Cake
An aromatic coffee-flavoured cake with in the shape of candy cane, can anything get more exciting that this heavenly treat?