Every year around Christmas, many families get together and build little houses made of candy and cookies. Talon Pham 27’ says “Me and my family all get together and make gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve. It’s really fun to see what everyone makes and to mess around with frosting.” This is a centuries long tradition that is practiced all over the United States and Europe, especially in Germany. However, not many know the origin of this candy-coated tradition.
In the early 1800s, more specifically around 1812, the Brothers Grimm had their now famous fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, published in Germany within their collection of stories titled Kinder und Hausmarchen, or Children’s and Household tales. Hansel and Gretel specifically caught the attention of many bakers across Germany with its line, “When they came nearer they saw that the house was built of bread, and roofed with cakes, and the window was of transparent sugar.” Inspired by the story, the bakers began crafting houses made of spiced honey biscuits, not gingerbread.
This caught on quickly with children who were enamoured by the thought of a small, sweet house. Lilly Dysart 27’ states that she “remembered reading the story in kindergarten. I thought it would be so fun to live in a candy house.”
While later iterations of the story changed the simple bread to the much more endearing gingerbread, the origins of said gingerbread are hard to trace. Ginger root, the root-vegetable that gives gingerbread its name and distinct taste, was first cultivated 5,000 years ago in China. Being a useful preservative, the plant spread to Greece where the first recipe for gingerbread dates back to 2400 BC. However, its spread to western Europe is unclear. Some believe an Armenian monk named Gregory of Nicopolis traveled west and taught the recipe to French bakers. Others believe it found its way South from Swedish nuns that began baking the recipe to ease indigestion.
Around the time it was invented, German immigrants that settled in Pennsylvania brought their cultural tradition over.This spread all throughout the states over the next hundreds of years has stuck with many American families ever since.