Do you know the SPRINT of baking gingerbread cookies ? Preparing the dough, rolling the dough, cutting out the cookie shapes, baking one, two, three, four or more baking sheets? And then decorating them and even building your gingerbread house? Gingerbread houses are a tradition all over the world, so where does it come from? Listen and you’ll know!

Hi and Welcome to the advent edition of my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. In this edition, I bring you a new short Christmas-themed episode every day of December until Christmas. If you want to read the transcript of this episode, click the link in the description!

 Today, we will answer where gingerbread houses come from.

The practice of making gingerbread houses originated in Germany during the 19th century. They became extremely popular after the Brothers Grimm wrote the fairytale about two children getting lost in the forest and then founding a gingerbread house belonging to a witch. Do you know the name of the fairytale in English? It is called Hansel and Gretel. Yeah, they kept the German name, not like our Jeníček a Mařenka.

And since gingerbread was already a popular treat during Christmas, it would only make sense that creating Gingerbread houses would be a Christmas tradition.

Honestly, it looks so fun but every time I tried to build one, it collapsed. Eventually, I always glued it with real glue so it wasn’t edible anyway. And then it just stood on a shelf during the whole Christmas time and then we threw it away.

What about you? Do you make a gingerbread house?

Now you know why!

Source: 

Brittain. Lara. „The History of Gingerbread Houses.“ UoR Student Blog, 21 Dec. 2022, blogs.reading.ac.uk/uorstudentlife/2021/12/08/the-history-of-gingerbread-houses-by-lara-brittain/.