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 The symbol of the shepherds’ crook is an ancient one,
representing the humble shepherds who were first to worship the newborn Christ. Its
counterpart is our candycane--so old as a symbol that we have nearly forgotten its humble
origin.
Legend has it that in 1670, the choirmaster at the
Cologne Cathedral handed out sugar sticks among his young singers to keep them quiet
during the long Living Creche ceremony. In honor of the occasion, he had the candies bent
into shepherds’ crooks. Legend also has it that in 1847, a German-Swedish immigrant
named August Imgard of Wooster, Ohio, decorated a small blue spruce with paper ornaments
and candy canes.
It wasn’t until the turn of the century that the
red and white stripes and peppermint flavors became the norm. In the 1920s, Bob McCormack
began making candy canes as special Christmas treats for his children, friends and local
shopkeepers in Albany, Georgia. It was a laborious process--pulling, twisting, cutting and
bending the candy by hand. It could only be done on a local scale.
In the 1950s, Bob’s brother-in-law Gregory Keller,
a Catholic priest, invented a machine to automate candy cane production. Packaging
innovations by the younger McCormacks made it possible to transport the delicate canes on
a scale that transformed Bobs Candies, Inc. into the largest producer of candy canes in
the world. |
