Nourishments—

Ribbons Of Holiday Delight

By Nancy K. Crevier

In the small town where I grew up, the adults conspired on Christmas Eve to keep the children out of the way while frantic last minute wrapping of gifts took place at home. (I figured this out years later, incidentally.) They did so by inviting the jolliest of elves himself, Santa Claus, to a special afternoon movie matinee. Santa and his helpers would lead the audience in singing lots of Christmas songs, punctuated by plenty of “Ho-Ho-Hos,” of course. Then the theater would darken and a suitable, seasonal movie and cartoons would captivate us small fry for the next hour.

The best part about the afternoon, though, was as we left. As we crowded out through the broad front doors into the hastily retreating daylight of late afternoon, Santa greeted each and every child with a big hug and a brown paper bag filled with candy.

In Minnesota in December, once you step out into the brisk below-zero temperatures, taking off your mittens and unwinding your scarf from around your chin and mouth just to eat candy is really not an option. So we would all hurry home as fast as our snowpant-thickened legs would allow, clambering over banks of snow pushed willy-nilly to the sides of the roads, slipping and sliding on patches of unsalted ice – no one worried about lawsuits then — and into the warmth of our kitchens, where we could spill our bounty across the kitchen table.

Tumbled there among the licorice whips and spiced gum drops, the ribbon candy was what stood out. The thin loops of brightly colored candy, available only during the Christmas season, stood out like gems among the other, far more ordinary, candy.

Ribbon candy is an exquisite hard candy made from corn syrup, sugar, water, coloring, and flavoring, that is cooked and hand-pulled into thin, narrow sheets, quickly formed into ripples and left to harden. It is, like most candy-making, a skill that takes practice to perfect, and one that I believe is best left to the experts — unless you like to spend long, sticky hours in the kitchen.

The ribbon candy was an array of color: cherry red striped with creamy white, Kelly green with narrow streaks of white and red running down the center, deep burgundy trimmed in white, strands of gold, brilliant yellow highlighted with stripes of cotton-candy pink — and every color was matched by a flavor as uniquely Christmas as the fragile loops of twisted colors.

My favorite flavors were clove and peppermint, with cinnamon coming in a close third. Just to see the jewel-like bits of color spread out on the table and to inhale the faint spicy scents was enough to assure me that it truly was Christmas.

The art of eating ribbon candy is a somewhat messy one. Licking it makes it last longer, but there is no avoiding sticky hands as the sugary colors warm on your tongue and melt down your fingers and across your wrists. Biting into it seems brutal, and inevitably, the dog ends up with the big chunk that breaks off, slips down your chin, and hits the floor. Wisely combining a few good licks and a well-placed nibble was always my modus operandi for eating ribbon candy, and kept me out of trouble on Christmas Eve.

By the time I was ten, our local movie theater had gone out of business, and the Christmas Eve show a thing of the past. Occasionally, ribbon candy would show up in a bowl placed just out of reach at an aunt’s or neighbor’s, but as the years passed, the holiday treat seemed to lose popularity and was no longer a critical part of our holiday celebration.

Then, a few years ago, ribbon candy began showing up once again in the gourmet food sections of local stores. Somehow it had regained its celebrity status. I bought a box, of course, and as I pulled the package of glistening ribbons out of the brown paper bag, it ignited memories that left a warm glow all through the holiday season.