It's fairly easy to connect the dots on any number of Easter traditions — except for how a giant bunny became involved, perhaps — but what about jelly beans? How did that maddeningly addictive sugar capsule become such a key player in a Christian holiday?
After Halloween, more candy is sold during Easter than any other holiday, according to history.com, which reports that more than 16 billion jelly beans are made in the U.S. each year for Easter.
The website posits a theory about their place in the Easter tradition, saying that eggs have long been associated with Easter as a symbol of new life and Jesus' resurrection. And the egg-shaped jelly bean became associated with Easter in the 1930s.
Reader's Digest says jelly beans used to be a Christmastime sweet until the realization that they resembled an egg shifted the focus. Christmas is second to Easter as the most popular time to eat them, according to the article.
Jelly beans' actual origins appear to date back to a Biblical-era concoction called a Turkish Delight. Turkish Delight is a jellylike candy coated in powdered sugar and it gained some fame as a favorite treat of the character Edmund in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
And National Geographic surmises that jelly beans are a cross between Turkish Delight and Jordan almonds – putting a hard outer coating onto a jelly-ish candy.
