Gingerbread houses: Where did the festive tradition get its start? (2024)

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Gingerbread houses: Where did the festive tradition get its start? ›

(WTAJ) — Gingerbread houses are a popular part of the holiday season — whether you like to create and eat them, or just keep them as decoration. But do you know where the tradition started? Historians agree that gingerbread houses originated in Germany.

Today, the ultimate Christmas gingerbread incarnation is of course the gingerbread house. It has been suggested that these edible structures originated in Germany between the 16th and 18th centuries. The trend for gingerbread houses must have spread to Britain at some point during the nineteenth century.

In the late 17th century, gingerbread became associated with Christmas. Russian bakers prepared gingerbread men and women, usually as replicas of those people attending parties. Gingerbread houses were introduced about 200 years later, when the Grimm brothers wrote Hansel and Gretel.

Even though it's slightly grisly, the story of The Gingerbread Man (who runs away from a cow, a horse, and a chicken but gets eaten by a fox) has delighted children at Christmas since 1875, when it was published in St. Nicholas Magazine. The cookie's ancestors and cousins have been enjoyed for far longer.

One family tradition that many Americans do during Christmas is build gingerbread houses together, a symbol of family and of home. Although not a religious tradition, it does remind us that being together as a family is God-given and something to be thankful for.

​Superstitions about gingerbread flourished in the 17th century. Witches supposedly made gingerbread figures, ate them, and thereby caused the death of their enemies. Dutch magistrates went so far as to declare baking or eating molded cookies illegal.

According to certain researchers, the first gingerbread houses were the result of the well-known Grimm's fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” in which the two children abandoned in the forest found an edible house made of bread with sugar decorations.

Gingerbread houses in Germany originated from bakers interpreting the description of a house from the story Hansel and Gretel. The story is about two siblings who encounter a witch living in a gingerbread, cake, and candy house. Bakers would apply and try to craft their versions of this house.

According to Epicure & Culture, gingerbread was sacred, and the only time it was allowed to be made by the general public was during Christmas and Easter. So, that's probably why it's seen as a Christmas delicacy. It's all in the timing. And once an association builds, it's just hard to shake.

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What's the Moral? The gingerbread man story's moral is slightly dark for a fable meant for children: Be careful who you trust. The cookie believed the fox when he said he wasn't tempted to eat him—this misguided trust led to the protagonist's downfall.

In 16th century Germany, people began to make elaborate gingerbread houses. "Centuries later, the Brothers Grimm's tale of Hansel and Gretel and the house in the woods made entirely of candy, boosted their popularity.

In the 16th century, Germans began making cookie-walled houses around the same time “Hansel and Gretel” was published, PBS said. The story, written by the Brothers Grimm, concerned two young children get lost in a forest before finding a witch with a house made of gingerbread.

Because the gingerbread walls will be under stress from the roof, there needs to be sufficient resistance to avoid cracking or total collapse. Dough with a tough, springy consistency and decreased moisture content is ideal, and can be achieved by using flour with high protein content, such as bread flour.

In Queen Elizabeth's time, “gingerbread” was a term used to describe something “fancy and elegant”, and the expression “cake and gingerbread” meant “pleasant”. A few short years later, however, the word “gingerbread” was being used pejoratively, as a term of disparagement.

A Swedish gingerbread house, known as "Pepparkakshus" in Swedish, is more than just a festive decoration. It's a symbol of the holiday spirit, family bonding, and Swedish heritage. These intricately designed houses are made of gingerbread dough and adorned with candies, icing, and other sweet treats.

An early form of gingerbread can be traced to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians who used it for ceremonial purposes. Gingerbread made an appearance in Europe when 11th-century Crusaders brought back ginger from the Middle East for the aristocrats' cooks to experiment with.

Gingerbread houses originated in Germany during the 16th century. The elaborate cookie-walled houses, decorated with foil in addition to gold leaf, became associated with Christmas tradition.

adjective. heavily, gaudily, and superfluously ornamented: a gingerbread style of architecture.