Pittwater Online News

The tradition of making decorated gingerbread houses started in Germany in the early 1800s and subsequently spread in Europe. It was carried also, by German immigrants, to Pennsylvania and Maryland in the United States of America. It is still very much alive today both in Europe and the U.S.A. 

Making gingerbread houses as Christmas decorations is a way of celebrating Christmas in many families, with children helped by their parents actively involved.

The ancient Greeks and Egyptians are known to have prepared gingerbread and the production of Lebkuchen – gingerbread – was widespread in medieval times.  It was baked firm so that it could be used for religious ceremonial purposes.  Specially prepared molds were used to create images of saints and other important religious figures.  Patterns and designs became increasingly detailed and intricate. Russian gingerbread makers are credited with making the first gingerbread men and women.

Specialist bakers are recorded as early as 1296 in Ulm and 1395 in Nuremberg.  In the 1600s the guild in Nuremberg started to employ master bakers and skilled workers to make complicated works of art from gingerbread.  Spices used included ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cardamom, with honey as the sweetener.  Religious gingerbread reliefs were made for events such as Christmas and Easter and often were used as window decorations.

However, according to some researchers it was not until the publication of the Grimm’s fairy tale Hansel and Gretel that the making of gingerbread houses started. (In the fairy tale the two children, abandoned in a forest, found a house they could eat, made of bread with sugar decorations.)  After the book was published German bakers started baking ornamented fairy tale houses of lebkuchen.  The new houses adopted the German style of gingerbread because of its harder consistency allowing taller and more elaborate structures to be made.

Technically a gingerbread house is a model house made of gingerbread, often covered with candies and icing.  This is the most common form, but it can be any other type of building – such as a castle, a small cabin, a church or even a sports stadium. 

In some places gingerbread villages are constructed with cars, trains, cable cars and figures of men and women added. Royal icing is used as an adhesive in these constructions.  In 1991 the city of Bergen in Norway started the practice of building, each year, a city of gingerbread houses.  In San Francisco two hotels, the St. Francis and the Fairmont, each Christmas have competed with rival gingerbread houses.

The National Gingerbread House Competition has been held for over twenty years in Asheville, North Carolina.  It attracts over 400 entries from the best gingerbread house designers in the U.S.A.

The photographs accompanying this article are of a gingerbread village on board the cruise ship Sea Princess at Christmas in December 2011.