What red and white striped candy is a popular Christmas favorite?

The red-and-white striped candy that is a popular Christmas favorite is the candy cane.

Candy canes are hard sugar candies traditionally shaped like a shepherd’s crook. The familiar version is usually white with red stripes and peppermint flavor, although modern candy canes also come in fruit, chocolate, cinnamon, and other flavors. They are commonly used as Christmas-tree decorations as well as edible sweets.

The candy cane’s exact origin is uncertain. A popular story says that a choirmaster in 17th-century Germany bent sugar sticks into hooks to keep children quiet during a church service, but historians have not found firm contemporary evidence for that tale. White candy sticks existed in Europe before the modern Christmas tradition developed, and the red stripes and peppermint flavor became strongly associated with Christmas in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The hooked shape is sometimes said to symbolize a shepherd’s staff or the letter J, but those explanations are later traditions rather than established facts.