Chocolate Santas

Everyone loves Santa Claus, and everyone loves chocolate. Put them together, and you’ve got a delicious holiday treat. But what inspired this idea in the first place? Who came up with the idea of chocolate Santas? And is it really nothing more than ritualized cannibalism?

Chocolate is known as an aphrodisiac the world over today, but until fairly recently, it was mostly the domain of the Aztecs, the Mayans, and European royalty.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Industrial revolution brought equipment that mixed dried cocoa powder with cocoa butter. This resulted in a form of chocolate that was not only pourable, but easy to mold.

Most likely, the Germans can take credit for making the first chocolate Santa Clauses — December 6 is known as Nikolaustag, or St. Nicholas’ Day, and the traditional gift appears to have been a toy and a piece of chocolate. Even today, nearly thirty million chocolate Santas are sold each winter in Germany alone by the Lindt & Sprüngli Chocolate Company, according to a 2013 interview with marketing director Heike Bootz.