It was Saturday, I was looking for inspiration for an article to write for this week and really was coming up short. (No one tells you this when you sign up, but choosing an article each week is a rather exciting yet very stressful journey!) What I knew was that I did not want to write about my Christmas list suggestions for collegiate fashionistas because well let’s be honest, I myself am relying on my fellow HerCampus team to help me out with that list my parents beg and plead for every year. And then it came to me. What is the big deal with peppermint during the holiday season?
Holiday inspired food drives the average American completely crazy. Endless Pinterest recipe pages, overpriced Starbucks concoctions, and even holiday flavored chapstick take over like the abominable plague. Did you know that Target was in shambles this season because of a recent shortage in pumpkin spice seasoning in America? I mean who knew that your average gourd would be the subject of such commercial distress? But just like the craze for pumpkin in the fall season, the same sickness happens all over again with peppermint! As I was pondering this bizarre social obsession, I was convinced that there must be a logical reason for the illogical phenomenon that the same food that treats bad breath is also a primary Christmas staple. So I did some digging to give you a brief history of Christmas associated peppermint through the defining food element of Christmas itself: the candy cane.
The candy cane originated from a choirmaster in Germany who wanted his choir kids to shut their traps during the Christmas Eve church service. I mean how can you blame the little nuggets for a bit of chatter when Santa is T minus 5 hours from coming down their chimney? Anyways the choirmaster found a local candy maker to make sugar sticks to occupy the kiddies. But to justify eating candy in church, he shaped them into a Shepherd’s staff for religious connotations. A sweet story, right? But where does the peppermint come in? To my devastation the truth is that it’s a mystery. Apparently the red striped minty delicious cane we all have come to know and love has no historical explanation, besides the fact that around 1900, the cane shaped sticks inspired by Mr. Music himself spread like wild-fire around Europe and were embellished with red stripes and wintergreen freshness. What a mind boggle to have to live with this engulfing trend whose roots we know nothing of!
My suspicion still runs wild as to how the green leafy peppermint plant with medicinal uses to treat nausea, UTIs and skin irritation has been morphed into its defining red and white striped, cane shaped stick of sugar. And if I did not need a paycheck or already accept employment upon graduation, I may even have considered devoting my life’s work to solving the mystery. I mean if only we could get the same gravitational strength toward Christmas peppermint in the drive for world peace, work place productivity or gym memberships we’d live in one hell of a country. But until then, go contribute to the socially acceptable craze of the masses. Buy that peppermint mocha, and sip away at the minty taste of the holidays. I promise you however that from now on with every sip, you will always ponder the birth and conspiracy of the Christmas peppermint.
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