It's red, it's white, it's stripy, and it's shaped like a shepherd's crook (or a walking stick, or a "j" if you squint). The candy cane is one of the most recognisable lollies on the planet, but its history is surprisingly murky. Nobody kept perfect records of the first candy cane, so today the story is part documented fact, part cherished legend, and part "nobody is entirely sure, but here's our best guess".
Grab a candy cane (or three) and let's untangle the sweet, twisty history of this Christmas classic.
A Sweet Legend from Cologne Cathedral
The most popular candy cane origin story goes like this: in 1670, a choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral in Germany handed out sugar sticks to keep his young choristers quiet and occupied during a long Living Creche Christmas service. Worried that giving children sweets in church might look a little improper, he supposedly asked a local confectioner to bend the sticks into the shape of a shepherd's crook, tying them symbolically to the shepherds who visited the newborn Jesus in the Nativity story.
It's a lovely story, and it might even be true, but it's worth being honest here: historians can't fully verify it, and it remains a popular legend rather than a confirmed fact. What we do know is that pulled sugar sweets were genuinely fashionable in 17th-century Europe, which lends the story at least some credibility, and that white sugar sticks bent into crooks were a well-established German Christmas tradition within a century or so of that supposed choirmaster.
Pulled Sugar, Shepherd's Crooks, and Quiet Children
Long before anyone added peppermint or stripes, candy canes (or rather, their plain white ancestors) were essentially just sugar sticks. Sugar-pulling, a technique where hot sugar is stretched and folded to give it a glossy sheen and light texture, was a popular confectionery craft across Europe from the 1600s onward.
Whether the hook shape was originally meant to evoke a shepherd's staff, or was simply a practical way to hang sweets on Christmas trees alongside cookies, fruit and other ornaments, historians genuinely disagree. Either way, the curved candy stick became an established part of German Christmas tradition over the following century, long before it ever turned red and white or tasted of peppermint.
Where Does the Peppermint Come From?
Here's a fact that might surprise you: nobody knows for certain who first thought to flavour a candy stick with peppermint. What we do know is that peppermint itself has an extremely long history as a soothing, medicinal herb, well before it ever met a lolly.
- Egyptian texts from around 1550 BCE recommend peppermint for stomach complaints.
- The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder documented 41 different medicinal uses for mint.
- By the 17th century, European herbalists were routinely prescribing peppermint for upset stomachs.
- Explorers Lewis and Clark reportedly packed "essence of peppermint" in their medical kit for their 1804-1806 expedition across North America.
Given peppermint's reputation as a soothing, palate-cleansing flavour, it's easy to see why confectioners eventually paired it with sugar sticks. Exactly when that first happened, though, remains one of the candy cane's unsolved mysteries.
Candy Canes Cross the Atlantic
Candy canes as we might recognise them arrived in America with European immigrants. The most commonly cited milestone is 1847, when August Imgard, a German-Swedish immigrant living in Wooster, Ohio, decorated a small blue spruce tree with paper ornaments and candy canes, in what's remembered as one of the earliest documented American Christmas trees decorated in this way.
Here's the twist, though: those early American candy canes were still plain white. The red-and-white striped, peppermint-flavoured candy cane most of us picture today simply didn't exist yet.
The Mystery of the Red Stripes
So when did candy canes get their iconic stripes? This is another area where the historical record gets a bit tangled. For roughly two centuries, candy canes stayed resolutely white. According to the National Confectioners Association, the red stripes and peppermint flavouring are generally believed to have emerged around the turn of the 20th century, likely thanks to sharp-eyed marketing rather than any religious symbolism.
But the story might stretch back further than that. An 1844 cookbook is said to contain instructions for making striped peppermint candy sticks, decades before the "turn of the century" timeline most sources point to, and striped candy canes were already turning up in children's literature by the 1860s and 1870s. As with so much of candy cane history, the honest answer is: it's genuinely difficult to pin down an exact date, and different sources tell slightly different versions of the story.
Bob's Candies and the Machine That Changed Everything
The candy cane's journey from handmade novelty to mass-market Christmas staple has one very clear hero: Bob McCormack. In 1919, McCormack founded a candy company in Albany, Georgia, which went on to become Bobs Candies, and by the 1950s it had grown into the largest candy cane maker in the country, becoming the first to wrap its canes in cellophane for mass distribution.
There was just one problem: candy canes were still being bent by hand, one at a time, which limited how many could be made. The solution came from inside the family. McCormack's brother-in-law, Father Gregory Keller, a Catholic priest, invented a machine that could automatically twist and bend candy into the cane shape. He filed a patent for what became known as the "Keller Machine" in 1957, and it was approved in 1960, allowing Bobs Candies to produce millions of candy canes a year instead of a painstaking handful.
Candy Canes Today
These days, candy canes are a genuine Christmas institution. Around 1.76 billion are produced in the United States alone each year, with roughly 90 percent of annual sales happening between Thanksgiving and Christmas. About half of Americans use them as much for decoration, hanging them on trees or tucking them into stockings and gift bags, as they do for eating.
And peppermint is no longer the only flavour in town. Modern candy cane makers have gotten a lot more adventurous, producing everything from fruity and sour flavours to some genuinely unusual novelty options. Here's a taste of how far the humble candy cane has come:
- Classic peppermint (the timeless original)
- Cherry, watermelon and other fruity varieties
- Sour flavours inspired by other popular lollies
- Chocolate and other dessert-inspired flavours
- Novelty flavours that push the boundaries of "should this be a candy cane?"
A Sweet Ending
From a possibly-true legend about a German choirmaster, through centuries of pulled sugar and mysterious stripes, all the way to a priest's ingenious candy-bending machine, the candy cane's story is every bit as twisty as its shape. Some parts are proven history, some are cherished folklore, and honestly, that mix is part of what makes the candy cane so charming. Next time you unwrap one, you'll know you're holding a genuine piece of (slightly mysterious) confectionery history.
References
- History.com. Who Invented Candy Canes?.
- National Geographic. The Sweet and Sticky Story of Candy Canes.
- Reader's Digest. Who Invented Candy Canes? The Sweet History of the Iconic Christmas Treat.
- Fox Business. The History of Candy Canes and How the Holiday Treat Turned into a Billion-Dollar Industry.