Violet Beauregarde was the gum chomping brat – uh, I mean, child – from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and the remake, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). She proclaims that the current piece of gum she’s chewing has been in her mouth for three months – a new world record.
My question is, whoever came up with chewing gum? Seems like a good question to ask on National Chewing Gum Day.
It seems that gum chewing has been around for quite a while. In fact, some historians take it back nearly 5,000 years ago. “The most common ancient chewing gum was tree resin lumps, but people chewed various sweet types of grass, leaves, grains, and waxes. Chewing gum has been used in multiple forms and flavors. The ancient Greeks chewed Mastiche; the ancient Mayans chewed the coagulated sap of the Sapodilla tree; North American Indians chewed the sap from spruce trees.”1
I have another question. What would make someone walk past a tree and say, “Oh, look, there’s a glob of something stuck to the side of the tree. Let me put this in my mouth and chew on it for a while.” I’m all for trying something new but I’m not that adventurous!
By 1848, John Bacon Curtis manufactured the first chewing gum in the United States. It was called the State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum, a mixture of spruce tree resin, flavoring, and paraffin. On July 27,1869, Amos Tyler received the first U.S. patent for gum and in December of that same year, dentist “Dr. William Finley Semple, was honored for this work by using the first patent for manufacturing chewing gum in
December 1869. The main ingredients in Semple’s gum formula were charcoal and chalk.”2 Again, who would have thought to put THAT in their mouth?!?
“The global chewing gum market is forecasted to make sales amounting to 48.68 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Based on sales per region, the largest market for chewing gum can be found in Europe, followed by the Asia/Pacific region. The North American market ranked third, where the beloved chewy candy sales are expected to reach 3.5 billion U.S. dollars by [the end of] 2024.”3
It would appear that chewing gum is here to stay!
Although we might wish for gum to disappear, especially if we get someone standing near us who snaps and pops the gum, blows bubbles, or chews with their mouths open, we will have to agree that it’s better to chew on some gum than to chew on each other.
Galatians 5:15 says, “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” Most people prefer the flavor of spearmint, peppermint, or cinnamon for their gum. However, there are those who prefer their gum to taste like the hide of the person they just chewed up and spat out. This is a customary action of unbelievers but it shouldn’t be practiced among believers.
The Psalmist describes lost people in Psalms 14:2-4. “The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. (3) They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (4) Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.”
Paul puts this action amidst other heathen actions in 2 Corinthians 11:20. “For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face.”
When we are tempted to chew on another person, let’s remind ourselves that such cannibalism is reprehensible to God for a very important reason. Not only are we chewing 
on someone else, we are chewing on ourselves and on Christ. “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” (Romans 12:5}
Instead, let’s put 1 John 4:7 into practice today. “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”
1http://www.chewinggumfacts.com/chewing-gum-history/history-of-chewing-gum/
2Ibid.
3https://www.statista.com/topics/1841/chewing-gum/
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