Gingerbread is very Catholic

Gingerbread is very Catholic  

According to the 1901 book, “A Dictionary of Miracles: Imitative, Realistic and Dogmatic” by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, “Gregor of Armenia” fasted entirely every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.  “On Tuesday and Thursday, he ate three ounces of food after sunset. On Sunday he did did not fast but ate very sparingly. He never ate meat or butter but his chief food was lentils, steeped in water and exposed to the heat of the sun. His rule was to eat as many as he could take up in his left hand.”

Gregory became a bit of a popular holy man in the French countryside, attracting “bourgeois and peasants alike” whom he would offer his Eastern hospitality to, “finishing the meal with a cake that he made himself, according to a recipe from his country, and comprising of honey and spices, in the fashion of his far away homeland in Armenia.”

This is recorded, according to several sources, in a 10th century manuscript from the Micy Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the region in which it is recounted that Gregory made, by hand, cake with honey and spices, “just like in his homeland.”

Thanks to Gregory, Pithiviers retained its rich gingerbread making tradition until this day – a “Saint Gregory of Nicopolis Gingerbread Brotherhood” or Brotherhood “du Pain d’Epices” if you’re French and fancy exists in the region, making gingerbread “according to the recipe passed down by Saint Gregory the Armenian.”
Liana Aghajanian  How an Armenian Monk Brought Gingerbread to the West, December 23, 2014  ianyanmag.com

Now, nobody knows about the exact origin of the gingerbread house, but here’s what we do know. Gingerbread was probably introduced to Europe by an Armenian monk in the 10th century. Apparently, he taught the art of baking gingerbread to Christian priests in France.

The Gingerbread Man has his origins in England. The English claim to be the first to bake and sell gingerbread, and they introduced the idea of the Gingerbread Man. Gingerbread was a much-loved treat in festivals and fairs in medieval Europe. It was shaped and decorated to look like many attractive things – birds, animals, flowers and armor. Gingerbread fairs were universally popular in those days.

Indeed, the young ladies of those days offered their favorite knights a piece of gingerbread to wish them luck in a competition. There was also a tradition of young women eating a “gingerbread husband” secretly hoping to find someone really special.

Gingerbread was prepared in a majority of monasteries, churches and other religious institutions in Europe. The Swedish nuns, for instance, used to bake them and even sold them to the public to raise money for charity. Gingerbread was also available for sale in pharmacies and farmers’ markets.
Gingerbread House History, Gingerbread Traditions Inc.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington has sometimes been called “a hymn in stone.” This year, it can also rightly be called “a hymn in gingerbread.”

That is because Charles Froke, the executive pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, has recreated the national shrine as the hotel’s 2010 massive gingerbread replication of a Washington landmark.

The gingerbread shrine will be on display in the hotel’s lobby through the Christmas season.

“I’ve made a lot of cool buildings (out of gingerbread) in the past, but nothing like this,” Froke told the Catholic Standard, Washington’s archdiocesan newspaper. “In the past, I’ve done the National Cathedral, the Smithsonian Castle, the White House, the Capitol and Healy Hall at Georgetown University, but this is the most ambitious one to date.”

Froke, a Catholic who attends St. Ann Church in Washington, crafted the gingerbread shrine out of more than 125 pounds of a specially prepared gingerbread dough.

“It is a little more sturdy and not as sweet as regular gingerbread,” the pastry chef explained.

The creation also includes about 55 pounds of icing and 20 pounds of sugar. He used dyes to create the shrine’s ornate blue dome. The stained-glass windows – which are illuminated by electric lighting – are made from colored liquid sugar.
Catholic Review, Top pastry chef recreates Washington’s national shrine in gingerbread January 19, 2012, Archdiocese of Baltimore

Having fun by decorating a big intricate three-dimensional cookie isn’t a gendered activity.  The seminarians were playing with sugar to make a craft at a party. That’s a party game. It’s a normal thing to do at your average awkward Christmas party, and way more fun than playing “White Elephant.” Some of them would probably pour the sprinkles in their mouths for a treat instead of decorating; some would faceplant in the fresh icing just to see what we’d say. Some of those men would attempt to decorate to be sociable, and would fail miserably, and that would make them laugh. Some of them, the artists and architects, would sit down to decorate the gingerbread and produce a genuine work of art.
-Mary Pezzulo, Steel Magnolias: Everything is Grace