Can't Catch Me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!

It's it odd that gingerbread is only made during the Christmas season?  It's not that flour and sugar and ginger are only harvested this time of year.  Very few cookies have a specific season, but gingerbread is one of them.  They are distinctly seasonal. Gingerbread houses could be decorated with grass and flowers for springtime celebration, but they aren't.  There is always snow on the rooftops of those houses.

Actually, there is a reason for that.  In the 1500s, the baking of gingerbread was restricted to guildsmen.  During the holidays, the regulations were relaxed and families could bake their own.  Thus, it became a holiday tradition.

A couple of times over the last week, I've caught myself wondering what it would be like if Christmas didn't come every year, but maybe every second or third instead.  It certainly would make early winter dreary in the off years.  I shutter at the thought.  But the older I get, the faster the years race by.  It seems we were just putting up a tree a month of so ago!  Gingerbread houses at my house require no baking. I get so wrapped up in wrapping, among other things, that I hardly notice how special things really are,

I wonder what I would most anticipate if I only got to have it rather than had to do it once a year. Hmmm, might be time to step back a few centuries and glory in the rare gifts afforded me only during this season.