Henrietta Hay's Column

Tradition may be the glue that holds society together, but you can't use the same glue every year. T. S. Eliot wrote, "It (tradition) cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor."

I have in mind Christmas and gingerbread houses and the evolution of a tradition, which was maintained by "great labor."

Once upon a time there was a little boy who found a picture of a gingerbread house and a pattern for making it. That small boy was my son John, now a dignified (more or less) attorney, and he and I started a tradition. Of course we didn't know then what it was. He carefully cut the pattern out of cardboard and labeled each piece. We mixed the dough, cut the slabs, baked it and put it together with powdered sugar frosting. Gingerbread House # 1 was dazzlingly beautiful, we thought. For many years this was our favorite Christmas tradition, but, alas, he grew up.

Many years later, when my children were grown and gone and hers were little, my friend Terry and I decided to revive the tradition. I dug out the original cardboard pattern with the batter stains and carefully printed letters, and we created Gingerbread House #2. It was dazzlingly beautiful, we thought. For a number of years we baked and decorated and experimented with materials and colors and inspirations and made careful notes of the many problems that arose.

One year for a change, we laid the small Christopher out on the floor, drew a pattern and made a gingerbread boy. I think it is possible that Terry still has a few pieces of rock-hard gingerbread hidden away to remind her that her 6 foot son was once that small.

Over the years, however, as we got busier and her kids got bigger, the failures began to exceed the successes. The slabs kept cracking and having to be mended with icing, which as Eliot would say was great labor. Then they wouldn't stick together and kept sliding apart in slow motion. The year that ended phase two of the tradition was the year they wouldn't stick together at all and in desperation we slathered on a lot of Elmer's Glue. After all, the color matched. But even that didn't work, so we tied it together with a piece of string and bid farewell to TRADITION. We decided that henceforth we would skip the kitchen and spend the time around the fire with hot buttered rum, reminiscing over Christmas Past.

But tradition is not so easily discarded. The characters may change, but the play is the same.

This year daughter Katie decided that she wanted a gingerbread house. Mother was adamant in her refusal to have anything to do with it. So in spite of my cooking impairment I was drafted to be the partner. After all, I helped create the first one nearly fifty years ago, and it seemed only reasonable to help revive the tradition this year.

But something new has been added. In this modern world a lot of stuff comes in boxes. I was told that this Christmas there is a Gingerbread House Kit. Honest. Would I make that up? I investigated and discovered that not only has the dough had not merely been pre-mixed; the panels have been pre-baked. Katie and I discussed the matter. Do we stick to tradition and bake the darned things ourselves? Or do we buy the kit and save a lot of aggravation? Fortunately she is a modern woman so we bought the kit.

We carefully assembled all the materials. The panels had been formed precisely and needed only our imaginative construction. The first thing I did was crack one of them and we mended it with frosting. Some things never change. The pre-mixed frosting was just as hard to use as the old kind. When we put on the roof for decoration it slid down ever so slowly and created icicles. The doorframe sagged and the wreaths were oblong instead of round. Even so, the tradition lives.

Gingerbread House #3 is dazzlingly beautiful, we thought. The cat thought so too. He ate a piece of the trim.

Tradition does not mean that things or people must stay the same. It means that the feeling and the spirit and the meaning will last through the years.

Merry Christmas.