November 21st is National Gingerbread Cookie Day!
Gingerbread and ginger root originated in the Middle East and migrated to Europe during the eleventh century Crusades.
- At first, European gingerbreads where only made by Catholic monks, who usually created them in the form of angels and saints.
- According to the Swedish tradition, you can make a wish, using gingerbread. First, put the gingerbread in your palm and then make a wish. You then have to break the gingerbread with your other hand. If the gingerbread brakes in to three, the wish will come true.
- The gingerbread house became popular in Germany after the Brothers Grimm published their fariy tale collection which included “Hansel and Gretel” in the 19th century.
- A doctor once wrote a prescription for gingerbreads for Swedish King Hans, to cure his depression.
- Queen Elizabeth I of England is credited with the first gingerbread men. Queen Elizabeth I’s 16th-century reign was known for elaborate royal dinners that included marzipan shaped like fruit, castles and birds. “She did do a banquet where she had gingerbread men made to represent foreign dignitaries and people in her court.”
- During the 16th Century time period, gingerbread men were dished out by folk-medicine practitioners, often described as witches or magicians, who would create them as love tokens for young women.
- Unmarried women in England have been known to eat gingerbread “husbands” for luck in meeting the real thing.
- Nuremberg, Germany has the title, “Gingerbread Capital of the World”.
- The “gingerbread house” became popular in Germany after the Brothers Grimm published Hansel and Gretel in the 19th century.
- The term gingerbread is from the Latin term zingiber via old French gingebras, meaning preserved ginger.
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