A well-loved holiday staple in the west, the candy cane elicits in many feelings of peppermint laced winter wonder and sentiments of snow-covered good cheer. Most associate the sugary treats with Christmas cookies, ornaments, and perhaps awkward school and office parties. Rigged elections, sentient roboinsect empires, and resource acquisition at first glance appear completely unrelated to each other let alone candy canes. However, each of the above elements is intricately linked, comprising critical components of the Glucose Conspiracy.

As far as the conditioned public psyche is concerned, the origins of candy canes are unclear. The most widely accepted explanations vacillate between the account of a 1670’s German choir master who created sugary sweets of swirled white and red representing purity and the blood of Christ respectively and the desire to immortalize the hooks of holy shepards in candy form. The Biblical references bear some relevance to the true origin of…