A few weeks from now, even the hateful Turkish Delight will have been eaten. There will not be a dry and crumbly mince pie left in the house and those gold foil-wrapped coins made from the cheapest of chocolate will be gone.
Christmas will be a distant, sugar-coated memory -but for the candy canes.
January is a new year and a new beginning but, like an odd sock or that single Countdown brick you forgot to give the neighbour’s kid, a stack of uneaten and unloved plastic-wrapped peppermint sticks will almost certainly plague your fresh start.
How long can you keep a candy cane? This is not a joke. I’ve had the same one on my tree for at least a decade and it’s still in mint condition.
“I don’t have strong feelings about them,” said a Westmere mother-of-two. “Bar how infuriating it is trying to peel off the friggin plastic. My kids used to end up kind of chewing/sucking the cane out of the wrapper. They were probably poisoning themselves with the BPAs and I was always finding these disgusting little sticky balls of saliva-soaked plastic about the house . . . "
Meanwhile, from a different suburban email address: “Candy canes are the only festive treat that makes Christmas cake look good.”
December is supposed to taste like cherries, chocolate and champagne. It should not taste like the hardened end of a tube of toothpaste.
On the festive eating scale of disgusting to delicious, candy canes rank worse than muscatels (literally, raisins), homemade limoncello (could the women’s mag Christmas recipe writers please think of something else to do with cheap vodka) and marzipan (smells like a cross between your grandmother and nail polish remover).
Candy canes are grosser than green glace cherries (at least you can put them in a cake) and bring renewed appeal to brandy snaps. Okay, so nobody truly hates a brandy snap but, as a December-food subgroup, it has not fared well against climate change and 98 per cent humidity.
What is the worst Christmas treat? And why is it candy canes?
Hilary Barry's 2020 homage to the candy cane. Photo / Facebook
Folklore suggests the crook-shaped hard candy was first inflicted on children in Cologne, Germany when the local choirmaster asked a sweet maker to create “sugar sticks” to help keep the kids quiet. Today, this man would be run out of town but it was 1670 and community Facebook pages had not yet been invented.
Other candy cane origin stories reference specific Christian symbology. The colour white is said to denote Virgin births and a sin-free Jesus, the tooth-cracking texture represents the rock-solid foundation of the church, and the red stripes are Christ’s blood. According to this version of events, candy canes are actually shaped J for Jesus (sound in theory, diabolically difficult to work on a Christmas tree).
Secularly speaking, candy canes have been co-opted by everyone from Gwen Stefani to Katy Perry - the singers have, respectively, made headlines for their Christmas-themed lip and eye makeup looks. Meanwhile, Aotearoa’s most famous candy cane is Hilary Barry. In 2020, the television presenter went red-white-and-green for the Auckland Santa Parade. Explaining her costume choice in a completely fictional interview, Barry said “I’ve earned my stripes and it just felt like the right mo-mint”.
Eye candy (cane) as worn by Katie Perry in her 2018 music video Cozy Little Christmas. Photo / Video still
There is no denying the visual appeal of the candy cane, but do you know a single person who would voluntarily eat one ahead of any other Yuletide treat (including a Terry’s Chocolate Orange)?
The candy cane is a culinary outrage perpetuated by food media and its insatiable appetite for seasonal semiotics. Its presence on a recipe spread might scream “Christmas” but read on, and discover the only good candy cane is smashed into thousands of tiny pieces and sprinkled on top of something else.
In a country that gets more than enough minty goodness from trumpet-shaped ice creams and chewy, wax paper-wrapped lollies, the candy cane is an international interloper. Whittaker’s has never made a candy cane chocolate, Al Brown has never served one in a slider and there is no recipe for it in the Edmonds. Candy canes suck. That plastic-wrapped peppermint stick is an imported tradition that should be retired. If you really want to eat a hard candy mint at Christmas, BRING BACK THE SNIFTER.
