No Shortage in Gingerbread Housing

SEELEY LAKE – One of the popular activities leading up to Christmas is the making of gingerbread houses. A Google search for "images of gingerbread houses" pulls up a wide variety of confectionary structures from humble six-graham-cracker buildings, to miniature replicas of the White House (a tradition started by Pat Nixon and escalating from there), to life-size structures with people walking around inside them. But where did gingerbread houses originally come from and why did they become associated with Christmas?

Gingerbread has a long history. Legend has it that a baker on the Isle of Rhodes prepared the first gingerbread in 2400 B.C. Reportedly the "spiced honey cakes" as they were called then, were so famous that wealthy Greek families would sail to Rhodes specifically to buy them.

During Roman times, according to Alan Davidson author of "Oxford Companion to Food," the ginger plant was "among the most highly prized of the eastern imports to the Roman Empire." Davidson adds that ginger was mostly used for medicinal rather than cooking purposes.

Some authors credit Marco Polo and some the Crusaders, but by the 11th century ginger was popular throughout Europe both as an ingredient in medicines and as a cooking spice. In the "Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink," John Mariani describes ginger during the medieval period as "a treasured and expensive condiment."

Elizabeth Hayes elaborates in "Spices and Herbs: Lore and Cookery," "In the Middle Ages ginger was second only to pepper in value, and even as late as the seventeenth century the price of a pound of ginger was the same as the price of a sheep."

The earliest medieval recipes for "gyngerbrede" produced something more like a sweet candy than the modern cake or cookie variants. Modifications existed, but the basic medieval recipe called for boiling a quart of honey, adding ginger, pepper and cinnamon, darkening the color with a bit of saffron or powdered sandalwood, and stirring in ground-up breadcrumbs until the mixture was thick enough to pour onto a pan and fashion into a square, to eventually be cut into small pieces.

Monks are generally credited with fashioning gingerbread into religious symbols or the form of saints for feast days and other religious occasions. An image was carved into a wooden slab called a cookie board, which was then pressed onto the gingerbread square, leaving an impression on the surface. The confection quickly became connected with fairs, themselves usually associated with saints' festival days. For instance, among the merchandise available at London's annual St. Bartholomew's Day Fair on Oct. 24 were gingerbread sweets stamped with the image of St. Bartholomew, the more costly ones adorned with icing.

Over time, cookie board carvings became more elaborate and the subjects more secular. Queen Elizabeth I commissioned detailed likenesses of herself and her courtiers made of gingerbread. She also enjoyed presenting important personages with their own gingerbread resemblances when they visited her court.

By the 17th century, the honey and breadcrumb recipe had been replaced with flour, sugar, butter, eggs and treacle (a substance similar to molasses). The baking, stamping and decorating of gingerbread figures and the carving of molds had become such an art form that France and Germany created special guilds for gingerbread bakers. Neither ordinary people nor other bakers were allowed to make gingerbread, though a dispensation was permitted on Christmas and Easter. Anyone could make gingerbread in their homes on those days.

Nürnberg, Germany [modern day Nuremberg], which became known as the gingerbread capitol of the world was the site of the annual December "Christkindlemarkt" [fair honoring the Christ Child] and gingerbread or "lebkuchen," in a variety of shapes and prices was the featured item.

According to the website "Why'd You Eat That?" The Nürnberg guild "employed master bakers as well as sculptors, painters, woodcarvers and goldsmiths who all helped make gingerbreads into magnificent works of art. Artists helped decorate gingerbread with frosting, gold paint or gilt. Woodcarvers created beautiful molds to press into the dough. Master bakers used all kinds of spices in their gingerbreads, as many as they could fit, including cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, white pepper, anise, and (of course) ginger."

The strong association of gingerbread with the famous Christkindlmarkt in itself was enough to connect the ginger treat as something special to the Christmas season. Cementing the connection even more firmly was the fact that Christmas was only one of two times in the year when gingerbread could be baked in the home. Perhaps the expense associated with the spice and its more ornate manifestations, while not putting it in quite the same category as gold, frankincense and myrrh, still gave it the aura of a commodity fit for a king.

Indeed, the "Why'd You Eat That?" website says, "The quality of Nürnberg gingerbread was such that it could be used to pay city taxes and was considered a gift worthy of heads of state and royalty."

Though the origin of gingerbread houses is attributed to the Germans, it is not known exactly when or where the first slabs of lebkuchen were pasted together with icing to form a lebkuchenhaeusel. What is certain is that the popularity of decorated gingerbread houses paralleled the popularity of the story of Hansel and Gretel, a folktale collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their first book, "Children's Stories and Household Tales" published in 1819. German gingerbread houses are still sometimes called "hexenhaeusel" [witches' houses] or "knusperhaeuschen" [houses for nibbling at], further solidifying their connection to the Hansel and Gretel tale.

Germans immigrating to America brought with them their ginger recipes and an inherent belief that gingerbread – whether shaped as figures or houses – ought to be part of a Christmas celebration. Immigrants from other countries brought their own gingerbread recipes and traditions, and America wholeheartedly embraced them all.

In an article entitled "The Origin of Gingerbread houses..." Vivian Roubal wrote in her newspaper column "At Home with Vivian" [Martinez News-Gazette, Contra-Costa, Calif. Dec. 3, 2013], "By the Victorian era, Americans were no longer building just 'witches houses.' Creativity had taken hold in the kitchen. Americans were building elaborate Victorian mansions, heavy with sugar icicles and candies and more splendidly decorated and festooned than most children could imagine in their wildest dreams."

That same year "Guinness World Records" officially certified the Texas A&M Traditions Club of Bryan, Texas, as record holder for building the largest gingerbread house: 60 feet long, 42 feet wide, 10 feet tall, with a volume of 39,201.8 cubic feet. The two-room house required a building permit and used traditional wooden framing and trusses. Among the quantities of ingredients used were 1,080 ounces of ginger to make the almost 4,000 12x17inch gingerbread bricks, which were mortared together by frosting. More than 22,300 pieces of candy were used for decoration inside and out.

Also inside the life-size gingerbread house from Dec. 14 to Christmas Eve was Santa Claus. The project was a fundraiser to build a new trauma center at the local hospital and adult visitors were asked to donate $3, children $2 to walk around inside the gingerbread house and visit with Santa. According to general manager of Traditions Club Bill Horton, 90 percent of the materials – from lumber to electrical supplies to baking ingredients – were donated and more than 200 volunteers helped on the project.