LAWRENCE — On the second floor of 428 Essex St., Norman Cooper and John Costanzo use copper kettles, an open-flame stove and cooling tables to produce Christmas' most popular sweet — the candy cane.

This is Priscilla Candies, where for more than 80 years they have been making the red-and-white striped candies by hand.

The long, thin hard candy often has a peppermint flavor, is decorated with stripes and bent at the top to look like a walking cane.

That may be one of the reasons why Harriet Cooper said people flock to the store from Thanksgiving until Christmas to buy the delectable sweets.

"It's a tradition and people appreciate that," said Harriet as the reason why candy canes are popular during the holidays. "It wouldn't be Christmas without them."

She said her biggest satisfaction is seeing a child and grandmother come into the store together to buy candy canes, as a way of continuing the tradition.

During the decades, they added anise, clove orange, chocolate, wintergreen, cherry, and molasses flavoring to the candy canes, but peppermint remains everyone's favorite.

Harriet has worked at Priscilla since she was a teenager. Her parents bought the business from the original owners when they retired. The Coopers did the same when her parents retired.

With their years of experience, Norman Cooper and John Costanzo make the candy manufacturing process almost effortless.

They pour coarse sugar, corn syrup, peppermint oils and fruit acids into the kettle, which is heated on an open fire stove. Once melted, it becomes a workable syrup that can be manipulated.

Costanzo, 59, takes the white ball and, using a meat hook, rolls it 40 times, using a figure eight method. They then take it to a cooling table and cut off a piece to use later as a coating to make the candy shiny. Both pieces thicken and hold their shape, which eventually forms the solid candy cane. The white ball is kept under a fire so it won't cool off and soften. While Costanzo holds one piece, Cooper, 63, pulls another and the red coloring begins to show in the center.

Costanzo continues to spin it. Using a line penciled in on the cooling table, Cooper cuts off 2 feet of it and his daughter Rhonda Freitas takes it and shapes it into a candy cane.

"You see the work involved," Cooper said as he turns off the heat over the cooling table, takes off his black gloves, wipes his forehead and takes a deep sigh.

"I feel I can do another batch," Cooper said. "It's a lot of fun and when you enjoy what you do, it doesn't seem like work."

Candy cane history

Candy canes were introduced in the 17th century.

Legend says the candy cane was created as a religious symbol for Christians — with the red and white stripes representing Christ's blood and purity bent like a shepherd's staff.

The hard candy were first given its shape in 1670 by a German choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral who gave members of the children's choir to keep them quiet.

Candy canes were brought to America in 1847 by a German-Swedish immigrant who decorated his Christmas tree with candy canes, and thus the tradition was born.

Most candy canes were made by hand until the 1950s when the Rev. Gregory Keller, a Catholic priest, invented a machine to make them automatically.