• Material Lore, food crafting
• Customary Lore, yearly event
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: K.M., Age 50
• Date Collected: 11-05-2021

Informant Data:

• K.M. (using initials out of request for anonymity) is a fifty year old mother of three.  She was born in New York and raised in the same.  She runs a cleaning service as a career when she isn’t maintaining her own house and children. On her spare time, K.M. spends every minute she can camping and spending time with close friends and family. This time with those she loves is the most prevalent source of her folklore.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: Gingerbread houses are traced back to German culture possibly around the nineteenth century. Since then, the famous christmas confectionary has immigrated America, among many other countries, to become another symbol of the joy the winter season brings.
• Social Context: This specific yearly event was brought up when asked about traditions and parties around Christmas. Gingerbread house making and decorating is often an activity meant to bring families and friends closer during the holiday season. This particular event was combined with both secret santa and competition aspects to add a twist to this cultural tradition.

Item:

• The event hosted by K.M. begins with blank gingerbread houses designated for each person. Prior to the event itself though, the participants are expected to bring a random and arbitrary gift that will be added to a collective pile. After dinner, the family members then begin to decorate their houses with candy. There is no time limit, though the last person to finish is often pressured to just stop decorating if they take too long. Once everyone has declared their house to be complete, K.M.’s mother (the designated judge every year) decides whose house is the best. This person gets to choose the present they want from the collective pile. K.M.’s mother then chooses the next best house, and they do the same. This process continues until the ultimate loser has no choice but to take the only remaining gift.

Transcript:

• “The gingerbread houses were at first an efficient way to just distract the kids. But then my siblings and I immediately drew connections back to when our mom would have us decorate a house each year as kids to put in the kitchen as decoration. This with the fact that us adults are way more competitive than the kids caused the gingerbread houses to become a tradition of itself. The planning every year is stressful but I honestly am so happy each time because it’s not only a good way to spend time with family, but it was an exciting way to connect back to my childhood traditions that my mother brought from Germany herself.”

Informant’s Comments:

• The best way to treat an event like this is to act like it’s a party for preschoolers because that’s how it eventually appears when competition is involved.

Collector’s Comments:

• This was folklore that I personally drew from as the informant is a family member of mine. I was so excited to share this because it really shows how certain activities such as gingerbread house making are universally associated and practiced with Christmas. In this case the folk are American citizens. However, folk “sub groups” can easily develop as particular families turn these universal festivities into personal traditions, but while also maintaining their folkloric and cultural roots.

Collected By:

Dylan Lawler

Dover Plains, NY

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS013

Fall 2021