Way back in the olden days — which for my purposes date at least to my mother’s childhood in the 1920s — holiday confections looked a whole lot different than they do now.

The candy that children prized often was made in their mother’s kitchen. Taffy was popular, as was the glossy ribbon candy that now has been relegated to a holiday novelty item. Judging by the store displays, foil-wrapped chocolate Santas are today’s premier holiday sweet. Buried a few shelves below the Santas is where you’ll find the old-fashioned Christmas candy.

When I was 6 or 7, my mother attempted to recreate the magical process of holiday candy making for my benefit. This could accurately be described as a production. We spent a day in the kitchen and my older brother was even forced into service.

The goo in the pan, a miracle of corn syrup and heat, formed a ball and its temperature had to be taken with a candy thermometer. My mother and brother also had to work quickly to pull the candy before it cooled.

While all of this was interesting on some level, I don’t remember ever feeling the need to watch anybody make candy again. This was clearly hard work. Perhaps I had already figured out the principle of convenience, namely that the charm of making something by hand sometimes cannot compete with the ease of buying the same thing for pennies.

Now I understand that people who want to add a little nostalgia to their holiday sweets can make the same candy in the microwave. Even this news has not piqued my interest in making candy in my own kitchen.

The other not-so-subtle change in holiday confections in recent generations is the waning interest in dried fruit. When “The Night Before Christmas” describes children as having sugarplums dancing in their heads, it’s talking about candy made of dried fruit. If the poem had been written now, the children’s dreams would feature foil-wrapped chocolate Santas keeping step with Britney Spears.

Anyway, dried fruit was at one time considered a treat worthy of being included in holiday confections. This would be a difficult concept for most of today’s children to fathom, if anyone were to bother them with it. The difficulty would be compounded if anyone were to let on that the prune had been one of the most popular dried fruits during the holidays of yore.

The problem with prunes, which are dried plums, is that they have had a long career as a natural laxative and most people no longer think of them as a snack but as a remedy for an unpleasant condition. Never mind that prunes have an earthy, sweet flavor and durable consistency that make them an ideal baking ingredient. Prune pudding is a very hard sell at the holiday table in most households.

The other fruits that have had some past glory as holiday foods are apricots, figs and dates. The reputation of all of them has suffered during the years for their association with the decomposition-defying fruitcake.

I suspect, however, that the old-time holiday dessert that would present the greatest challenge for the uninitiated would be the mincemeat pie. Traditional mincemeat was a chopped mixture of nuts, dried fruit, beef suet, ground meat and spices, spiked with rum or brandy. While the alcohol content might win a few points, the meat ingredients wouldn’t fly today.

Chalk up another point for the foil-wrapped chocolate Santas.