Banking on Chocolate Coins – An Ancient Tradition

When it’s nearing wintertime, most confectionery retailers know it’s time to ensure their chocolate supplies include those old favourites, novelty coins. Wrapped in shiny gold or silver foil and stamped with realistic designs, chocolate coins are ubiquitous around the holiday season. But few people understand exactly how these novelties came to be so popular. Like many holiday traditions, the origins of the chocolate coin are complex, multilayered, and cloaked in custom and legend.

Jewish Tradition

In Jewish tradition, the exchange of coins is part of the eight-day festival of Hanukkah, which can fall anywhere between late November and late December. The coins, known as gelt (“coin” in Yiddish) were intended to symbolise commemorative coins that were minted after the Jewish sect, the Maccabees, defeated the Greeks in the 2nd century. The tradition of gifting money during Hannukah extends as far back as the Middle Ages, when Jewish children would use the coins as a pot of money to be won while playing dreidel, a popular game around Hanukkah.

Americans Adopt the Chocolate Coin

It wasn’t until the 20th century that these gifts of money became foil-wrapped and edible. In the early 1900s, American chocolatiers created replicas of gelt by wrapping chocolate discs in gold or silver foil, and stocked their chocolate supplies with the sweet, shiny novelties we know and love today. The American chocolate manufacturer Loft’s was the first to produce chocolate gelt, which the company packed in mesh pouches meant to resemble money bags.

Today one can find chocolate gelt included in the chocolate supplies of many confectionery retailers around November. These coins are still sometimes used in dreidel games, for a sweet instead of monetary reward.

Christian Tradition

In the Christian tradition, chocolate coins also derived from real money. The story begins with St. Nicholas, who, according to legend, was famously kind and philanthropic to children. One particular legend details how the saint bestowed three bags of gold coins upon the daughters of a poor man to help pay the girls’ dowries. The coins, which St. Nicholas dropped down the poor man’s chimney, landed inside the girls’ stockings, which were hung up by the fireplace to dry during the night. This legend is the basis for the tradition of hanging up stockings on Christmas Eve, as well as for the prevailing belief that Santa Claus (a modern St. Nicholas), arrives via the chimney to deliver gifts.

European Tradition

In continental Europe, the edible versions of the saint’s famous coins are exchanged on St. Nicholas Day, a holiday that commemorates the saint’s martyrdom. St. Nicholas Day is celebrated on 6th December in Belgium and Germany and the evening of 5th December in the Netherlands.

Today, well-loved chocolate supplies ensure that the tradition of exchanging gifts of money lives on in a sweetly irresistible way. Whether one is looking to spin a dreidel or fill a stocking, confectionery retailers can help boost your chocolate income in a most delicious way.