Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the music, the baking, the giving and receiving of presents, the parties and good food—remembering our blessings and why we celebrate.
Most of all, I love getting together with family and friends to celebrate. If you read my last guest blog on PBOK, you probably figured out how important my family, especially my three daughters, is to me.
In our house, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without some of our long-held family traditions. I worried as my girls grew older and went off to college that some of these traditions might fade away. Blessedly, they’ve remained just as important to my girls as they are to me.
Some of our traditions have religious meaning—singing “Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel” as we light the advent candles on the dinner table. Others are a mix of religious and secular—reading the original Christmas story followed by ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas while wearing our new pjs on Christmas Eve.
One special tradition we’ve followed every year since my girls were in pre-school is making gingerbread houses. From scratch. I’m talking, bags of flour, jars of molasses, Crisco, sugar, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, eggs, oil and a dash of vinegar. Lots of mixing. Getting an arm workout as you roll the dough. Using pattern pieces to hand cut walls, roofs, chimneys, and more. Puffs of confectioners sugar billowing as you add tablespoons of hot water and meringue powder and start the mixer to whip up batches of Royal Icing. Tables splattered with a mix of candies, chocolates, frosting bags with tips. Lots of snacking as you work and Christmas music playing in the background.
Mind you, this isn’t just an afternoon event. I’m talking a long evening or afternoon of baking pieces. Another day of decorating your building sides and creating fir trees from upside down sugar cones, a special tip and lots of green Royal Icing. Another day of “gluing” your houses together and adding the roofs.
In case you haven’t noticed, we take our gingerbread house baking pretty serious.
It all started when I bought a VHS tape entitled “The Magic of Gingerbread Housed with Cheryl Lesh-Maughlin.” It’s a short video that comes with a recipe and pattern pieces you cut out by hand. Little did I know what I was starting when I watched the video with my girls and sparked our love of house building.
What started out as one simple house our first Christmas season
Has morphed into much more. We’ve made gingerbread neighborhoods, complete with a frozen pond and a sleigh train full of toys.
Being avid Chicago Cubs fans, one year we attempted to create a mini Wrigley Field, complete with mini gummi bears as Cubs fans and a sports bar across the street. Yes, for any Cubs fans out there, you’ll be happy to know we included rooftop seating on the bar and a handicap parking space in the lot.
One year we scratched our itch to travel by creating three spots we’d either like to visit or would love to visit again. This turned into a hotel on the Greek shores of Santorini—complete with brown sugar and cinnamon sand, the Roman Coliseum—with crumbled ruins inside, and a pavilion in Guell Parc in Barcelona—multi-colored Nerds candies provided the fabulous colors Gaudi envisioned in his park.
When my girls were younger, you’d probably find a Jasmine or Belle figurine on the front porch. Now those figurines have been donated or hand-me-downed to cousins. But the fact remains that my girls still remind me gingerbread time is arriving. One might comb Pinterest for ideas. Another might come up with some outlandish design, which means another one has to talk her back to reality.
It’s a lot of work. A lot of hours. In my mind, that means a lot of bonding time. A lot of singing carols together. A lot of laughing as we reminisce.
We used to start early in December. Then we’d have the house to display during the holiday season. The frosting and gingerbread make a great potpourri on the kitchen counter. Then sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve we break out a hammer and a butter knife to start chipping away. Yes, Royal Icing dries that hard. I’m talking, cement hard. That’s what makes it perfect for house building.
So it’ll mean another year’s creations demolished and devoured. But the memories we’ll have created will linger. My girls will once again scatter off to colleges and jobs in other states. But the together-time we shared will be priceless.
To me, it’s the reason for the season—peace, love, and joy. That’s what I wish for you and your family this holiday.
