Candy Cane Christmas
Originally uploaded by tres.jolie
Here's a little red story, in honor of candy canes.
I recently learned that straight white sticks of candy were a welcome treat in Europe hundred of years ago.
The choir master of Cologne Cathedral created the modern shape for the canes in 1670, by having the sticks bent at the top to look like a shepherd's staff or crook.
This shepherd's staff shape was to remind church goers of the shepherds who tended their sheep in the hills of Bethlehem on that holiest of all nights.
Christmas music at the Cathedral was sometimes disrupted by children being noisy, so the choir master devised the clever idea of handing out "candy canes" to children as they entered the cathedral.
His ploy was so popular that it spread quickly throughout Europe, as churches adopted his idea and in 1847 August Imgard, a German immigrant, used candy canes to decorate his tree in Wooster, Ohio. Red and white stripes were first seen in about 1900, and now they are a welcome and tasty Christmas decoration in countless homes.
