Gingerbread Men - The Golden Glow of Christmas Past® (2024)
When you think about gingerbread at Christmas, probably the first thing that comes to mind is the flat, spicy cookie that is made into men whose heads you bite off! Did you ever wonder why “gingerbread men” are shaped like men in the first place? The answer can be traced back hundreds of years.
Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558-1603, is credited with the invention of the gingerbread man. (I am not kidding!) She loved throwing lavish royal dinners that included things like marzipan shaped like fruit, castles and birds. But, the Queen’s court also included a royal gingerbread maker. (More about these bakers a little later.) Elizabeth delighted in having her gingerbread maker bake gingerbread men made in the likenesses of visiting dignitaries and people from her court. I wonder if these gingerbread men were placed on a serving platter to allow guests to choose any one they wanted. Just imagine the satisfaction of biting off the head of someone you really did not like!
But, the Queen wasn’t the only person eating gingerbread men. Taking their lead from the Queen, gingerbread men were often handed out by folk medicine practitioners (often known as magicians and witches). These gingerbread men were created as “love tokens” for young women. The idea was to get the man you’d like to marry to eat the gingerbread man! Tadah! A trip down the aisle was in your future! Well that was what the magician/witch told you. A contemporary to Elizabeth was none other than William Shakespeare. In Loves Labor’s Lost, he wrote this, “An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread.” I guess William really liked gingerbread.
So, how did gingerbread cookies become something to eat around the holidays? Through the ages, gingerbread was sacred and only specific bakers, all men, were given the exclusive rights to baking it. These men all belonged to baking guilds. The only time during the year that gingerbread was allowed to be made by the general public was during Christmas and Easter. So, that’s most likely why it’s seen as a Christmas food. It’s all in the timing! Once an association is established, it’s nearly impossible to change it. Eating gingerbread at Christmas might also be associated with the medicinal properties of the ginger root. It was believed that eating spices heated you up in the winter. Another explanation may be related to overeating during the holidays. Ginger is good at taming upset stomachs. Remember when you were a kid and you were given flat ginger ale when you had an upset tummy?
The popularity of gingerbread cookies and houses spread to colonial America. Recipes for the treat varied from region to region, depending upon what immigrants settled there. In 1848, it is said that Queen Victoria and her German-born husband Prince Albert, brought gingerbread cookies into the mainstream when they included them in with other German Christmas traditions they adopted and promoted as family centered traditions, like decorating a Christmas tree and the Yule log. It was during this time that gingerbread cookies became associated primarily with the Christmas holiday.
The development of tin cookie cutters in the mid-1800s also helped to establish gingerbread cookies in many kitchens and breathed new life into the tradition of gingerbread. The new cookie cutters proclaimed the end of the long-established and complicated cookie board used primarily in bakeries. Soon, these shaped cookies began to appear as ornaments on trees and as gifts for family and friends.
Today, gingerbread cookies are as popular as ever, becoming an established Christmas tradition in America. If reading this blog post has made you hungry for gingerbread men, perhaps you are off to make some for yourself. I have the perfect idea for enjoying them after baking them. Why not sit down with your favorite beverage and The Glow magazine? What a great combination!
One theory holds that since the "men" are really more toddler-shaped than adult, they came to represent the baby Jesus at Christmas. And the spices involved are sometimes thought to represent the exotic gifts of the Magi.
Precursors to gingerbread men played a role in the Saturnalia, the Roman winter solstice celebration. The decadent festivities included excessive drinking, eating, and carousing. Celebrants gobbled down man-shaped biscuits representing the culminating event of Saturnalia—human sacrifice as a gift to appease the gods.
In the Gingerbread Man, the problem is that no one can catch the gingerbread man. The solution is that the fox tricks the gingerbread man and finally catches him. So to recap, most stories have characters, a setting, a problem and a solution.
Answer and Explanation: The moral of the story of the gingerbread man is to be careful of who you trust. The gingerbread man outruns the people and animals chasing him, but then reaches a river where a fox is sitting on the bank. The fox offers a ride on his tail, and the gingerbread man decides he will be safe there.
In the 1875 St. Nicholas tale, a childless old woman bakes a gingerbread man, who leaps from her oven and runs away. The woman and her husband give chase, but are unable to catch him. The gingerbread man then outruns several farm workers, farm men, and farm animals.
The gingerbread man was very confident that he could run fast and escape from everyone. However, he was proved wrong when the sly fox caught him. Secondly, “we should never trust anyone blindly”. The gingerbread man believed the fox offered him and was not at all tempted to eat him.
The story of the gingerbread man could be an analogy where the oven is education; the parents are the educators; the gingerbread an individual; the animals technology; the river life and the fox is a controller.
Taking their lead from the Queen, gingerbread men were often handed out by folk medicine practitioners (often known as magicians and witches). These gingerbread men were created as “love tokens” for young women. The idea was to get the man you'd like to marry to eat the gingerbread man!
A fear that gingerbread men could be the agents of the devil also spread throughout Europe. In 1607, the superstitious magistrates of Delft in the Netherlands made it illegal to either bake or eat any of these molded and spiced cookies. This was also a time of religious upheaval.
Another rumor is that these iconic little humanoid cookies date all the way back to Queen Elizabeth I of England. Allegedly, she had them baked to resemble her likeness. There's also a story that desperate women ate the sugary-sweet men-like treats to try and boost their chances of attracting a suitor.
The Gingerbread man is one of England's most frequently used Christmas decorations. Its creation is attributed to Queen Elizabeth !, who is thought to have served the gingerbread figurines to visiting dignitaries. Lebkuchen, the German gingerbread, is likely to be the oldest Christmas gingerbread cookie.
The story tells of a Gingerbread Man who runs away from the old woman who baked him. He is chased by several people and animals. A crafty fox finally eats him.
Run, run, run as fast as you can,You'll never catch me, I'm the gingerbread man.I ran from the baker and his wife too.You'll never catch me, not any of you.
Conflict a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one. The conflict in “The gingerbread man” is after the old women finishes making the little gingerbread man he comes to life and runs straight out the window down the street. The animals along the road start to chase the gingerbread man.
Gingerbread is claimed to have been brought to Europe in 992 AD by the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis (also called Gregory Makar and Grégoire de Nicopolis). He left Nicopolis (in modern-day western Greece) to live in Bondaroy (north-central France), near the town of Pithiviers.
The gingerbread man was very confident that he could run fast and escape from everyone. However, he was proved wrong when the sly fox caught him. Secondly, “we should never trust anyone blindly”. The gingerbread man believed the fox offered him and was not at all tempted to eat him.
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.
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Introduction: My name is Prof. Nancy Dach, I am a lively, joyous, courageous, lovely, tender, charming, open person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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