Gingerbread Traditions
©2002 Suzy Wurtz
‘Tis the season. The season of, among
other things, gingerbread houses. These architectural confections hold strong
memories for my family.
"What are your recollections of all
the gingerbread houses we've made?" I asked my 6th grader.
"That you held them together with
tacks," she replied without a pause.
Actually it was finishing nails and
straight pins. Tacks would have been too short and too thick. But who was I to
intrude on my daughter's warm memories of the holidays?
Our first gingerbread house was a
gorgeous, expensive creation from an upscale bakery. A single, middle-aged man
who employed my husband gave it to our daughter when she was one year old. Only
a guy without children would choose such a posh, perishable present for a
toddler. It was so beautiful that we couldn’t bear to have the child smash it,
so we kept it on the table and let her look at it. We also couldn’t bear to eat
it so we let it dry out. I think we finally threw it away the following Memorial
Day.
Remembering that lovely construction
a few years later, I bought a gingerbread house kit with pre-made walls, tubes
of frosting and small bags of candy decorations. A prefabricated gingerbread
house for a preschooler seemed like a great idea.
I know you've never done this, but I
started the project with my daughter without reading all of the directions. We
opened the cellophane to find that the walls and roof needed a number of hours
to "set" before you applied the decorative trim. We were to glue the walls and
roof at the contact spots with the frosting mortar, prop it up with various cans
from the cupboard and let the frosting mortar “set.” It didn’t give direction on
how to explain “set” to a three year old at 7 p.m. on a December evening. After
much whining (from me as much as my child), we went to bed, vowing to continue
the project early the next day. However, in the morning, the mortar frosting
still wasn’t holding the walls and roof together. Out came the sugar and I
whipped up additional stiff frosting. Still no luck.
So I got out the hot glue gun. It
worked better than the frosting, but didn’t quite do the job. The cans had to
stay around the structure to secure it. So we decorated the cans of green beans
and chicken noodle soup, too. I explained to my daughter that she didn't get to
eat the gingerbread house, but oh, oh, oh, wasn’t it fun just to decorate one?
And weren’t those big cans next the gingerbread house cute, too? Let’s imagine
they were full of toys!
The following year, we received a
gingerbread house kit as a gift. That year, I skipped the frosting mortar
entirely and brought down the hot glue gun from the start. Along with a few
straight pins, this was a much more efficient way to build a house. My husband
volunteered some thin finishing nails to the project and we were off and
running. A family tradition was in the making.
When my child was five, we had friend
from out of state visit us in early December. I thought it would be a nice
bonding experience for the friend if he and the child would decorate a
gingerbread house together. My friend looked suspicious and said, “You used hot
glue to hold the gingerbread house together? How do you eat it?”
“This is art, not food,” I answered.
They created a lovely decorative structure with no further questions.
And so it was. We fashioned more
gingerbread houses over the next years, all held together with hot glue, pins,
and nails. We discovered enhanced hot glue techniques. We got better at
decorating and added appropriate small toys and tokens to the landscape. Each
year, we ate candy from the bags BEFORE it went on the house. We laughed and
took pictures of the results.
People often wince when I repeat this
story of gingerbread with hot glue and nails. But we’re fond of our family
holiday tradition because it’s just that—it’s ours.
| Previous Column
| |Next Column |
Back to Top
