Many of our most treasured and familiar Christmas traditions are packed with symbolic meaning.

The circular shape of a wreath and the holly and ivy it's made from are all said to represent eternal life.

By some accounts, the ingredients in a mince pie represent the gifts of the Magi,

and a Christmas candle is often said to represent the star of Bethlehem.

And one of the most ubiquitous sights and flavors of the season is a symphony of symbolism in its own right.

Its white color represents purity and rejection of sin. Its peppermint

flavor is a reference to hyssop, a mint-like herb that appears several times in the Old

Testament for ceremonial cleansing of houses, among other things. The red stripes represent

blood. And, of course, the shape, roughly the length and diameter of a pencil, is bent at the bottom

into a crook to form a letter J, for Jesus.

Maybe you've even heard that these items were used as a way for Christians to secretly

identify one another during times of persecution.

Except, none of that is actually true.

Just as with the claim that the gifts from the 12 days of

Christmas are secretly metaphors for biblical stories, so too has the humble candy cane been

given a second life in the realm of myth. Myth retrofitted and superimposed upon something with a

completely different origin story. There is no record at all to suggest the candy canes were created

with any of this symbolism in mind. I mean, if they were, wouldn't they be called Candy J's?

And wouldn't the red symbolizing blood be a more appropriate symbol for Easter than Christmas?

And besides, it's pretty well established already that candy canes were actually created

way back in 1670 in Cologne, Germany, as a way of inducing children to behave in church.

The choir master of the Cologne Cathedral needed to keep children quiet during ceremonies

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