This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in IMAGES for Dec. 23, 2021, East Bernard Express, East Bernard, Texas.
Last week my two granddaughters hosted a Christmas party for their friends, during which each guest got to decorate a small gingerbread house, with a special prize given to the one creating the most beautiful house. A neighbor across the street from them served as judge, and, based on the photos I saw of the houses, I know the judge had a difficult time deciding on the winner!
Ever since these same two granddaughters were old enough to “glue” the walls of the house together with cake icing, my wife and I observed the Christmas tradition of decorating a gingerbread house. The first years, they decorated one house together, and graduated to separate houses as they grew older. Our ethnicities no doubt determine our Christmas traditions, mine being German-Wendish and my wife’s being British. The two traditions have never been too far apart.
First concocted in Belgian, gingerbread made its way to Germany (where it became an essential part of celebrating Christmas), then spread throughout Europe, including England. In England, gingerbread was already popular during the time of Shakespeare, and much earlier than that in Germany.
Although each of these is slightly different, — gingerbread, Lebkuchen, Pfefferkuchen, Honigkuchen, ginger nut biscuits, and honey cakes, — they are essentially the same thing. The English ginger nut biscuit, which is sort of like the American ginger snap, is much harder than the German Lebkuchen or the American gingerbread, gingerbread being more like bread than cookie. There are many variations of each of these, even within the various countries where they are made. Nuremberg, the capital of the State of Bavaria, Germany, is known as the Gingerbread Capital of the World.
Bavaria and Saxony are adjacent States in Germany, and so it is not surprising that many of the traditions of my Wendish ancestors, who came from Saxony, are similar to those in Bavaria, gingerbread traditions included. My Wendish grandmother always baked gingerbread men for Christmas, and my brother and I got to decorate those nose-less creatures with raisin eyes and cherry mouths. So the smell of gingerbread baking in the oven has always meant the smell of Christmas to me. These delicious men were soft like bread rather than hard like cookies. Although my grandmother told us about gingerbread houses, she never made any, perhaps because she baked everything in the oven of a wood stove, and it’s not like punching buttons on an electric range.
When my wife and I first started the Christmas tradition of making gingerbread houses, probably with our daughters, before our granddaughters arrived on the scene, I, being the nerdy scholar that I am, researched gingerbread houses the hard way (didn’t have google back then). I discovered that the tradition began in Germany in the 1800’s, and that it probably started right after Grimms’ fairytale, “Hansel and Gretel,” was published in 1812. In the story, which had nothing to do with Christmas, the witch’s house was described as being made of bread, with a roof made of cakes, and windows made of transparent sugar. Later versions of the story changed “bread” to “gingerbread.” It wasn’t long before the gingerbread house tradition spread all over Europe, and eventually to America.
Although we think of cutting down an evergreen tree, bringing it into the house and decorating it as the most widely observed tradition in Germany, I rather think that gingerbread men and houses were just as important. Please know that I also love and cherish Christmas traditions developed in Mexico and Spain and elsewhere in the world, but for this Christmas, I chose to write about my family traditions.
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Ray Spitzenberger is a retired WCJC teacher, a retired LCMS pastor, and the author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.