Tale of the Gingerbread House

One of the joys of getting ready for Christmas is the day to create the beloved Gingerbread House. When our children were at that magical age of wanting to do everything Christmas – popcorn and cranberry garland for the tree, Holiday cookies, print our own wrapping paper with potato stamps, they also begged to make their first gingerbread house.    

Karla, the ten year old baker, meticulously measured out the construction pieces of each “cookie” wall. Guy and Jessie whipped up the cement frosting for the walls and roof.

Once the pieces were baked, cut, and cemented into place, the plain house was ready for the candy decorations. The memory of watching little hands pressing candy chips on the roof and around the frame still sends a thrill through me. They decorated the cardboard platform with cookie bushes and green coconut leaves on cookie pine trees each carefully placed to the rhythmic song of child talk.

Once their very own unique ginger house was completed we gave it a proud place on the dining room table flanked by two candles. In the morning we happily ate our crunchy granola admiring the beauty of the previous day’s creation.

A few days went by when one of the children noticed a hole in the back wall of the gingerbread house along with nibbles out of the bushes and outside the newly created doorway - little black . . . well, mouse turds. It’s a week before Christmas and a mouse has moved into our beautiful gingerbread house!

What a fine mess this is! 

We called a family meeting with children lobbying for the new resident of their creation to happily enjoy the place. We adults explained the whole cleanliness thing to which they countered (while munching on other pretty cookies), that they were not intending to eat the structure anyway. We agreed to move the house off of the table and implement an eviction in the case of excessive mouse partying or if mouse relatives moved in. Recognizing this was a seasonal decoration we also agreed to move the house outside along with the Christmas tree and its edible garland when we entered a new year.

Each morning the children checked on the interesting disintegration of their ginger house. We imagined the mouse ecstatic at his good fortune. We never saw the little creature but only knew him through his leavings. Though there are those who would criticize our parental decision to allow the mouse to live with us in our house, the situation remained benign.

Our gifts from this curious animal visit included humor, imagination, cooperative decision making, and eventually our mouse in the house became part of a delightful repertoire of family stories.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a healthy new year.

Helene and family

p.s. Happy Birthday Leon, Jim, John and Tyler, fine December men.