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Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent – which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 – followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God’s own Son into the world. Throughout December we’ll ponder ways that we can ready ourselves to receive Jesus, once again, into our own hearts.
One of the best ways to get ready for Christmas is to rethink some of its most treasured symbols – to experience traditional things in a new way.
That includes Christmas candy.
Stick candy, for instance, has been around for hundreds of years. But it’s strangely difficult to pin down exactly when and why the first confectioner bent one of those sticks into a candy cane.
There’s an oft-told story, almost certainly legendary, that in 1670 the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany created candy canes as a happy diversion for children who had to endure long-winded Christmas Eve services.
The familiar J-shaped sticks don’t actually appear in historical documents until 1847, when it was reported that a German immigrant in Ohio hung some on his family’s Christmas tree.
Everyone agrees that the center of the candy cane universe is Albany, Georgia, where Bob McCormack began mass-producing them in 1919. His brother-in-law Gregory Keller, who was a Catholic priest, invented the “Keller Machine” that seamlessly created the signature hook.
Candy canes earned their stripes sometime early in the 20th century, along with their peppermint flavor – but no one knows who should be thanked for those happy innovations.
Fortunately, there’s one thing everyone agrees on.
Candy canes have become a celebrated Christmas tradition because they are reminiscent of the wooden staffs, or crooks, that the shepherds presumably carried with them to Bethlehem.
Philip Keller, in his classic volume A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm, points out that no other profession uses such an instrument. One might argue that it was the essential equipment of the guy who was charged with “giving the hook” to contestants being dragged off the stage of The Gong Show, but we’ll let Keller’s point stand.
A crook is of no value in managing cattle, horses, or dogs. It is uniquely designed, shaped, and adapted to the needs of sheep.
Psalm 23 includes this familiar line: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
A shepherd’s staff is an instrument of comfort.
“Comfort” is a conflation of the Latin words com (“with”) and fortis (“strength”). A shepherd comes with strength to the flock. Where the sheep are weak, the shepherd is strong. That’s what it means to comfort someone in need. We bring, on God’s behalf, the gifts of courage and hope.
Keller points out, “The shepherd will use his staff to gently lift a newborn lamb and bring it to its mother if they become parted… The staff is used by the shepherd to reach out and catch individual sheep, young or old, and draw them close to himself for intimate examination. The staff is very useful this way for the shy and timid sheep normally tend to keep at a distance from the shepherd.”
A shepherd’s crook is also used for guidance.
Sheep have a well-deserved reputation for being, to put it discreetly, creatures of limited self-management. If one member of the flock reaches too far to munch a clump of grass and tumbles into a ravine, the others, one by one, will blindly follow.
“Again and again,” Keller writes, reflecting on his own experience tending sheep, “I have seen a shepherd use his staff to guide his sheep gently into a new path or through some gate or along dangerous, difficult routes.”
It’s a tender process.
The tip of the long, slender stick is gently laid against the animal’s side. The pressure guides the sheep in a direction that will bring it to the place of the shepherd’s choice – a place of security.
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, does the same with us.
It may be that you’ve been feeling the gentle pressure of the Shepherd’s crook “against your side” – a barely discernible nudge that seems to be compelling you to consider a new direction, or to avoid making a decision that, in retrospect, would look like nothing less than a tumble into a deep abyss.
This Christmas, every time you pick up a candy cane, remember that God is silently but surely steering you toward greener pastures.
And every day, through Jesus, he is offering you his irreplaceable gifts of comfort, encouragement, and strength