Q 01/05

Which two colors make up the classic candy cane?

A) White and red

B) White and green

C) Red and green

D) Gold and white

Answer · why

A) White and red

White and red: the red goes on as straight strips laid along a fat white log of candy, and only when the rope is stretched and twisted do they wind in...

Q 02/05

The best-known candy cane origin story places its 1670 invention in which German cathedral city?

A) Munich

B) Nuremberg

C) Cologne

D) Dresden

Answer · why

C) Cologne

Cologne Cathedral is the legend's setting, where a choirmaster is said to have ordered the first crooks; the hook may equally have been added so the s...

Q 03/05

In the 1670 legend, why did a German cathedral choirmaster hand out sugar sticks to children?

A) To reward good singing

B) To keep them quiet

C) To thank the bell ringers

D) To break the Advent fast

Answer · why

B) To keep them quiet

To keep them quiet through a long nativity service, the story goes; to head off objections to candy in church, he had each stick bent into a crook rec...

Q 04/05

August Imgard, credited with first hanging candy canes on an American Christmas tree in 1847, was an immigrant from where?

A) Italy

B) Ireland

C) Germany

D) Hungary

Answer · why

C) Germany

Germany was his birthplace; in Wooster, Ohio, he cut a spruce from the woods for Christmas 1847, and the town took to lighting a Christmas tree over h...

Q 05/05

The earliest known printed mention of a 'candy cane', from 1866, appeared in a magazine in which country?

A) Germany

B) Great Britain

C) United States

D) Switzerland

Answer · why

C) United States

United States: Boston's Ballou's Monthly Magazine used the words in the story 'Tom Luther's Stockings', nearly two centuries after the 1670 date the G...