{"id":5087,"date":"2025-12-05T09:19:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T14:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5087"},"modified":"2025-12-05T09:19:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T14:19:52","slug":"candy-comfort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/05\/candy-comfort\/","title":{"rendered":"Candy Comfort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder ways that we can ready ourselves to receive Jesus, once again, into our own hearts.<\/em>

One of the best ways to get ready for Christmas is to rethink some of its most treasured symbols \u2013 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,\u00a0that in 1670 the\u00a0choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany created candy canes as a happy diversion for children who had to endure long-winded Christmas Eve services.\u00a0

The familiar J-shaped sticks don’t actually appear in historical documents until 1847, when it was reported that a German immigrant in Ohio hung some on his family’s Christmas tree.\u00a0\u00a0

Everyone agrees that the center of the candy cane universe is Albany, Georgia, where Bob McCormack began mass-producing them in 1919.\u00a0His brother-in-law Gregory Keller, who was a Catholic priest, invented the “Keller Machine”\u00a0that seamlessly created the signature hook.\u00a0\u00a0

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\u00a0innovations.

Fortunately, there’s one thing\u00a0everyone agrees on.

Candy canes have become a celebrated Christmas tradition because they are reminiscent of the wooden staffs, or crooks,\u00a0that the shepherds presumably\u00a0carried with them to Bethlehem.

Philip Keller, in his classic volume\u00a0A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm<\/em>, points out that no other profession uses such an instrument.\u00a0One might argue that it was\u00a0the essential equipment of\u00a0the guy who was\u00a0charged with “giving the hook” to contestants being dragged off the stage of The Gong Show<\/em>, but we’ll let Keller’s point stand.\u00a0\u00a0

A crook is of no value in managing cattle, horses, or dogs.\u00a0It is uniquely designed, shaped, and adapted\u00a0to the needs of sheep.\u00a0\u00a0

Psalm 23 includes this familiar line: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

A shepherd’s staff is an instrument of comfort.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

“Comfort” is a conflation of the Latin words com<\/em> (“with”) and fortis<\/em> (“strength”).\u00a0A shepherd comes with strength<\/em>\u00a0to the flock.\u00a0Where the sheep\u00a0are weak, the shepherd is strong.\u00a0That’s what it means to comfort someone in need.\u00a0We bring, on God’s behalf, the gifts of courage and hope.\u00a0

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\u00a0by 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.\u00a0

Sheep have a well-deserved reputation for being, to put it discreetly, creatures of limited self-management.\u00a0If one member of the flock reaches too far to munch\u00a0a clump of grass and tumbles into a ravine, the others, one by one, will blindly follow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

“Again and again,” Keller writes, reflecting on his own experience tending sheep,\u00a0“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.\u00a0\u00a0

The tip of the long, slender stick is gently laid against the animal’s side.\u00a0The pressure guides the sheep in a direction that will bring it to the\u00a0place of the shepherd’s choice – a place of security.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, does the same with us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

It may be that you\u2019ve been feeling the gentle pressure of the Shepherd\u2019s crook \u201cagainst your side\u201d \u2013 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,826,636,1043],"class_list":["post-5087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-comfort","tag-sheep","tag-shepherds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5089,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087\/revisions\/5089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}