While everyone loves Gingerbread House Day, this year the holiday is sparking conversations about whether it’s too problematic to celebrate due to the very real and ongoing issue of gingerfrication.
“This is serious, man: One day you know your neighborhood and the next everyone’s walking around with gourmet candy canes,” said Gin Tummy, 5th generation Petersen Family gingerbread village native. “These stale new cookie-cutter ginger townhouses all look the same! My house on the other hand is made with unique, vintage candy finishes and rustically crumbling exteriors plastered over with royal icing—it’s got character! And just a slight chronic ant infestation.”
Some say gingerfrication is doing more good than bad long-term, though.
“If anything, the area’s really improved—I mean, before these new developments went up, they were selling pop rocks on every corner,” said one young gingerbread man. “You see this? All this over here was just abandoned space and liquorish stores.”
At press time, most agreed though that the much bigger, pressing threat they all face together this year is the giant Voodoo Doughnut gingerbread doll who just moved here from Portland and keeps telling everyone to “put some children’s breakfast cereal on it.”
