New Candy Cane Holiday “Flava”

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

While people were up many hours before dawn to get in line waiting for sales in preparation for the Christmas shopping season, I was sleeping in and getting ready for work, and adding a new touch to the design here at Cross Driven Radio.

One of the things I enjoy about the holiday season is the candy. One of my favorites is the candy cane. Depending who (or what website) you believe, there are varying stories about the history of the candy cane.

One story talks about the history dating back to the Christmas celebrations at the Cologne Catherdral where the choirmaster had bent sticks of candy in the shape of a shepherd’s crook and passed them out to the children, which became a popular tradition which spread throughout Europe.

Another story talks about a candy maker that wanted to make a candy that could be a reminder of Jesus Christ, so he made the Christmas candy cane. He started off with a stick of pure white hard candy. The white color symbolized the virgin birth and the sinless nature of Jesus, and the hard candy symbolized the solid rock which was the foundation of the church, and firmness of the promises of God.

The candy maker made the candy in the form of a J, which represented the name of Jesus and the staff of the Good Shepherds. He then stained it with three stripes which showed the scourging Jesus received, and symbolized the blood shed by Christ on the cross. When you break the cane, it reminds us that Jesus’ body was broken for us.

This website allegedly proves both of those stories as urban legend, and that it has become fashionable to claim that the candy cane was not only designed to be fraught with Christian symbolism, but that it was created as a means of communication between persecuted Christians.

Enough about that! Did you know that: