Where I grew up, in the middle of South Dakota, there was a dearth of delights. This isn’t a tale of the Great Depression. I grew up in the sixties, when the world’s economy was booming. It’s just that South Dakota has always been behind the curve in pretty much every way that mattered to me as a young girl.

Certainly that could be said for the specialty foodstuffs that were available to us. My mother, who immigrated to South Dakota from Kansas (ha ha, but she did), was always telling me how backwards South Dakota truly was. I mean, for goodness sake, she came from the urbane metropolis of Hutchinson, Kansas!! Not truly sophisticated, if you know what I mean.

Every once in a while my mother got fed up with the lack of niceties available to us in SD and she would mail order something wonderful from the modern world of commerce. I recall how she wanted the LP of Tennessee Ernie Ford, which included Sixteen Tons, and she then waited and waited for the highly breakable vinyl record to arrive. Because it was vinyl, it was very fragile and shipped as such. Along the way, the package was repeatedly hand-stamped with the words “fragile” and when if finally reached my mom, it was broken into a thousand shards. This, she judged, was what she got for living in such a godforsaken place.

During the same years, one Christmastime, she told me she had ordered something for me that would delight my visual and taste senses! She wouldn’t divulge the secret, but I was thrilled with anticipation. When the package finally arrived, she opened it and to her disgust, the ribbon candy was also broken into 1000 shards. She threw the package in the trash and it was best to leave her alone for the rest of the day.

If you follow my blog, you know that I am currently living on a lovely little lake in rural Illinois, waiting for the Italian Consulate to issue me by long-term Visa. Recently my friend Renee took me to a shop nearby and I was happy to see a selection of old-fashioned Christmas candies for sale. I jumped at the chance to fulfill, at long last, my mother’s wish for me to see ribbon candy. I miss my mom and Christmas can be rough. But, I’m really thrilled to have this pretty candy (and it is packed with flavor too!) near me this Christmas! And, only a few little pieces were broken off one or two of the ribbons, so I know that would make my mother happy!

I checked my favorite reference, Wikipedia, for some history on the delightful confection, and here is what I found:

Ribbon candy is a traditional Christmas candy that goes back for centuries in Europe, though it is unclear exactly where the candy was first created.

Confectioners developed the candy as a Christmas decoration for their shops, modeling the wavy form around the candy maker’s thumb. In the 1800s mechanical crimpers were invented to shape the ribbons. Finger-like crimpers simulated the curl originally put into the candy by hand. A candy maker made the candy, another spun off a ribbon and fed it into a crimper which was then turned by hand. Finally, the curly ribbon was cut with scissors as it came down a small conveyor.

Mechanical crimpers worked well, but the process was slow and very labor-intensive. As demand increased for ribbon candy, it became clear that another way to make the candy had to be found. Until the 1940s ribbon candy was never made on a large scale, because more sophisticated equipment was needed. A single spinning roll was developed and it was found that by very careful tending of the candy batch, the hand spinner could be eliminated and the automated machine could run faster. The big bottleneck was in having to cut the candy with scissors. An air activated automatic cutter was invented by Sevigny Candy and is still in use today by F. B. Washburn Candy, which purchased Sevigny Candy in June 1986.

Merry Christmas everyone!