49 Fun Facts About Candy Canes

What colors are the stripes on a classic candy cane?

The classic candy cane is white and red: a white pulled-sugar body with red stripes, though peppermint sticks were plain white for most of the 1800s.

The best-known candy cane origin story places its 1670 invention in which German cathedral city?

The legend places the first canes at Cologne Cathedral, where a choirmaster supposedly had sugar sticks bent into hooks in 1670; no contemporary record supports the tale.

In the 1670 legend, why did the cathedral choirmaster hand out sugar sticks to children?

He supposedly asked the candy maker to add a crook so the sticks would recall the shepherds' staffs.

Which Ohio town was home to August Imgard, said to have hung candy canes in 1847?

Wooster still celebrates him; the tree was a blue spruce cut from woods outside town.

The earliest known printed use of 'candy cane' appears in an 1866 story published by whom?

Ballou's Monthly Magazine ran the story 'Tom Luther's Stockings' in 1866, the earliest verified appearance of the words 'candy cane' in print.

An 1844 recipe book, The Complete Confectioner, described mint candy sticks as what?

The 1844 book gave a recipe for straight peppermint sticks, white with colored stripes; the crook came much later, and canes stayed straight sticks for decades.

Which magazine, in 1882, described 'tall, twisted candy canes' being hung on a Christmas tree?

Babyland, a magazine for the very young, described 'tall, twisted candy canes' hanging from a Christmas tree in 1882, showing the ornament use was already familiar.

Per the National Confectioners Association, red stripes and mint flavor became the norm around when?

Postcards from before 1900 show all-white canes; the stripes seem to arrive with the new century.

Bob McCormack began making candy canes for local children in 1919 in which Georgia city?

Bob McCormack founded the company in Albany, Georgia in 1919, first as the Famous Candy Company; his canes later went out under the Bobs Candies name.

Gregory Harding Keller, who invented the Keller Machine used by Bobs Candies, had what day job?

Keller was a Roman Catholic priest and Bob McCormack's brother-in-law; Bobs Candies adopted his machine in the 1950s.

What did the Keller Machine actually do?

The Keller Machine took straight cut candy sticks and bent them into canes automatically, replacing hand-bending that broke a large share of the sticks.

Bobs Candies claimed to be the earliest manufacturer to do what?

Bobs Candies claimed to be the first confectioner to wrap its candy in cellophane, the clear moisture-resistant film DuPont began producing in the 1920s.

By the end of the 1950s, how many sticks of candy was Bobs Candies turning out each day?

By the late 1950s Bobs Candies was producing 1.8 million sticks of candy a day, on its way to becoming the world's largest maker of striped candy.

Bobs Candies, once the world's largest striped-candy maker, was sold in 2005 to which company?

Farley's & Sathers bought Bobs Candies in 2005; the buyer merged with Ferrara Pan in 2012 to form Ferrara Candy Company, which kept the Bobs brand.

Which Bryan, Ohio company, known for Dum-Dums, makes roughly 45 percent of US candy canes?

Spangler Candy Company of Bryan, Ohio, maker of Dum-Dums since 1953, says it produces about 45 percent of the candy canes sold in the United States.

How many candy canes does the Bryan, Ohio maker of Dum-Dums say it crafts every day?

The company says it makes 2.7 million candy canes a day at its Bryan, Ohio plant, alongside about 12 million Dum-Dums.

Roughly how many candy canes are produced in the United States each year?

American confectioners make about 1.76 billion candy canes a year, roughly five for every person in the country.

What share of US candy canes are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas?

About 90 percent of candy canes are sold in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the second week of December the peak.

In the last month of the year, canes hold what sales distinction in the US?

Candy canes are the top-selling non-chocolate sweet in the United States in December, the month that accounts for the bulk of their annual sales.

A survey cited by History.com found what share of people start eating a candy cane from the straight end?

The survey put 72 percent of candy cane eaters at the straight end first, leaving 28 percent who start with the hook.

National Candy Cane Day is observed in the US on which day?

National Candy Cane Day falls on December 26, the day after Christmas, when the canes come off the tree and get eaten.

Why does mint feel chilly in your mouth?

The receptor is called TRPM8; the brain gets a 'cold' signal even though nothing has actually cooled down.

The mint plant behind the candy cane's flavor is a natural hybrid of which two other mints?

Peppermint is a natural cross of watermint and spearmint, which is why Linnaeus's 1753 name Mentha piperita is now written with the hybrid sign as Mentha × piperita.

Menthol, the compound that gives mint its cool bite, was first isolated in what year?

Hieronymus David Gaubius, a German-born physician working in Leiden, first isolated menthol from peppermint oil in 1771.

Candy canes are a hard candy, made by heating sugar syrup to roughly what temperature?

The syrup is cooked to about 160 C (320 F), past the hard-crack stage, leaving a glassy, nearly water-free mass that sets hard as it cools.

What do British English speakers call hard candy such as candy canes?

Britons call hard candy 'boiled sweets', though the syrup is cooked well past a simple boil, to the hard-crack stage, before it sets.

What is Sweden's red-and-white mint stick, invented in Gränna in 1859?

Polkagris, literally 'polka pig', was created in Gränna in 1859 by the widow Amalia Eriksson, who made the striped peppermint sticks to support herself and her daughter.

How long was the Lansing, Michigan candy cane Guinness recognized as the world's largest in 1998?

The 1998 Lansing cane measured 36 ft 7 in; staff of Fabiano's Chocolates and Ice Cream built it from 25 pounds of sugar and 8 pounds of corn syrup.

Which Geneva, Illinois pastry chef built a 51-foot candy cane for a 2012 Guinness record?

Alain Roby built the 51-foot candy cane at his All Chocolate Kitchen shop in Geneva, Illinois in December 2012, taking the Guinness record for the longest candy cane.

Besides shepherds' crooks, the candy cane's hook is often said to represent the crosier of which bishop?

Saint Nicholas of Myra, the 4th-century bishop whose December 6 feast day fed the Santa Claus tradition, is the figure whose crosier the hook is said to echo.

The claim that the candy cane's 'J' shape stands for Jesus is described by historians as what?

Historians class the 'J for Jesus' story as an urban legend: plain white peppermint sticks existed long before it, and the tale surfaced only in the 20th century.

Which holiday confection combines crushed candy canes with layers of white and dark chocolate?

Peppermint bark layers dark and white chocolate and tops them with crushed candy canes; Williams-Sonoma's 1998 version made it a holiday staple.

What is the flat round peppermint disc with red stripes radiating from the center called?

Starlight mints are the round red-and-white peppermint discs handed out free at countless diner registers, sold in bulk by makers such as Brach's.

Which British seaside sweet has a word running through the whole stick?

Seaside rock, famous from Blackpool and Brighton, has lettering built from strips of colored candy around a pulled white core before the whole roll is stretched thin.

Which 2003 film has Will Ferrell's Buddy list candy canes among the elves' four main food groups?

In Elf, Buddy names the elves' four main food groups as candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup, and pours the syrup over his spaghetti.

In Balanchine's 1954 Nutcracker, the Russian trepak is danced by characters dressed as what?

In Balanchine's staging the Russian trepak is the Candy Canes dance, led by a soloist leaping through a hoop; Hot Chocolate, Coffee and Tea fill out the same act.

What is the German word for a candy cane?

Zuckerstange, literally 'sugar stick', is the German word for a candy cane; the word simply joins Zucker (sugar) and Stange (stick or pole).

Which of Necco's brands did Bryan, Ohio's candy cane maker buy after the 2018 bankruptcy?

The Bryan, Ohio company acquired the Sweethearts and Necco Wafers brands in 2018 after Necco's collapse and relaunched the conversation hearts in 2020; Clark Bar, Mary Jane and Sky Bar went to other buyers.

The word 'candy' ultimately comes from a Sanskrit word for sugar crystals. What is it?

Medieval European confectioners learned sugar-work from Arab and Byzantine sources and first used it for medicines.

The mint genus Mentha is named for Minthe, a nymph loved by which Greek god?

Hades took the naiad Minthe as a lover, and in the myth a jealous Persephone turned her into the low, fragrant plant that carries her name.

Which comedian stars in the 2023 Christmas film Candy Cane Lane?

Eddie Murphy plays Chris Carver, a father whose bid to win his street's decorating contest goes magically wrong, in Reginald Hudlin's 2023 Prime Video film Candy Cane Lane.

Which Chicago confectioners filed one of the earliest patents for a candy cane-making machine in the early 1920s?

The Bunte Brothers, a Chicago confectionery firm, filed one of the earliest patents for a candy cane-making machine in the early 1920s, though the canes continued to come off the line to be finished by hand.

Roughly what breakage rate did early candy cane makers suffer when bending canes by hand?

Hand-bending the hot sticks broke over 20 percent of them, a loss that lasted until the Keller Machine reached Bobs Candies in the 1950s.

Which glass-working technique is fundamentally identical to the way candy canes are made by hand?

Caneworking, the millefiori technique, builds a thick patterned rod and draws it out thin so the design survives in miniature, exactly how a striped candy cane's colored strips are stretched down to size.

Which children's magazine mentioned 'candy-canes' in connection with Christmas in 1874?

The Nursery, a Boston magazine for small children, mentioned 'candy-canes' alongside Christmas in 1874, the earliest known printed link between the two.

The 'cane' in candy cane descends from the Greek kanna, meaning what?

Cane comes via Old French and Latin canna from Greek kanna, 'reed'; the word named any slender stalk or rod long before it named a walking stick or a striped sweet.

In which English county was peppermint first identified, in the 1690s?

Dr Eales found the plant growing in Hertfordshire, and the naturalist John Ray recorded the discovery in 1696.

Which country produced about 78% of the world's peppermint in 2023?

Morocco produced about 78 percent of the world's peppermint in 2023, far ahead of second-placed Argentina.

The founder of Bryan, Ohio's Dum-Dums maker paid how much for a baking-powder company in 1906?

He paid $450 for the Gold Leaf Baking Powder Company in 1906 and moved it from Defiance to Bryan, Ohio; the firm turned to candy a few years later.