Join Mike & the Crew TONIGHT for National "Gingerbread House Day" with Warriors for Life (WFL)

Join our Volunteer, Army Combat Medic Veteran, & Music Writer/Producer Mike Williams TONIGHT for "Mike Check" edition of Warriors for Life (WFL) Online, sponsored and presented by Victory for Veterans, Inc. (VFV).

We are asking everyone to share who we are and what support that Victory for Veterans, Inc. (VFV) is providing via WFL. If you know someone who is a veteran, first responder or a family member/caregiver, please ask them to join us for at least one meeting so they can learn more about what we do and how they can share their wisdom with others who may be able to learn from them.

TONIGHT's Topic:  National "Gingerbread House Day"

Join Mike & Friends TONIGHT for a discussion about National "Gingerbread House Day" with a focus on what Holiday traditions do you/don't you clelbrate?

“Gingerbread House Day isn’t about perfect walls or straight lines—it’s about sticky fingers, shared laughter, and the sweet tradition of building something that collapses together and still feels like home.”

A Holiday Born of Sugar, Fairy Tales, and Questionable Engineering

The legend goes something like this:

Once upon a time, in the early 2000s, a newspaper editor had a blank spot in the “Fun

Facts” column for December 12. They’d already used up “Wear Brown Shoes Day” and “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” so someone said, “Well, people are making gingerbread houses anyway…”

Historical backdrop: gingerbread houses before the “Day”

Even though the day is new, the tradition is centuries old:

- Gingerbread became associated with Christmas in Europe by the 17th century, when only professional bakers were allowed to make it—except at Christmas and Easter, when ordinary people could bake it too. That exclusivity helped make gingerbread a “special occasion” food.

Days Of The Year

- Elaborate gingerbread houses became popular in Germany in the early 1800s, partly inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” with its edible candy-and-bread house in the woods.

- Communities have since turned this into spectacle—like Pepperkakebyen in Bergen, Norway, billed as the world’s largest “gingerbread city.”

Days Of The Year

- In 2013, a record-breaking gingerbread house in Bryan, Texas covered about 2,520 square feet, stood 21 feet tall, and contained roughly 35.8 million calories.

Gingerbread House Day is basically a modern name slapped on a much older tradition.

Over time, simple cookies turned into full-on construction projects. And as soon as humans started stacking snap-prone walls using sugary glue, disaster became inevitable.

Exhibit A: The Earthquake Test Massacre

If you think your gingerbread house has had a bad day, imagine this:

A student paper in California runs a gingerbread house contest. Bakers of all skill levels

show up with big dreams and small tubes of icing. They assemble their masterpieces,

sprinkle them with candy, and present them to the judges.

Then the organizers reveal the twist:

“Now we’re going to see which house can survive a simulated 7.5 earthquake.”

Out comes a shaking platform. One by one, the houses are placed on it and subjected to the kind of stress test usually reserved for serious engineering projects and disaster movies. Roofs slide off like sleds. Walls surrender. Gumdrops roll away in silent panic. By the time the shaking stops, almost nothing is left standing.

The ultimate winner? Not the prettiest house. Not the most festive. The champion is the slightly lopsided, under-decorated bunker of a build everyone had quietly judged—because in gingerbread engineering, sturdy beats sexy every time.

Exhibit B: The Blindfolded Builders of Office Legend

Next, we travel to the open-plan battlefields of corporate America.

Somewhere, an HR department decides that team building is best achieved by combining:

1) frosting

2) time pressure

3) blindfolds

The rules:

- Everyone actually touching the house is blindfolded.

- One teammate is allowed to see, but can only give verbal instructions.

- There is a strict time limit.

What follows is less “festive crafting” and more sugary trust exercise from hell:

- “NO, THAT’S THE ROOF, NOT YOUR FACE.”

- “TURN IT AROUND—NO, THE OTHER AROUND.”

- “YOU’RE ICING THE TABLE. STOP ICING THE TABLE.”

When the timer finally goes off, the “winning” house has two walls barely standing, one of which collapses as if it’s been waiting for its cue. The carpets are saved by tarps, dignity is not, and the office learns a valuable lesson: never put your career in the hands of a blindfolded coworker with a piping bag.

Exhibit C: Collapse, Reinvention, and the Gingerbread Tent

At a rehab center in Virginia, staff departments hold a gingerbread house competition using simple kits. One team, full of hope and frosting, begins assembly… and their house promptly implodes. Walls slide. The roof surrenders. It looks like an edible natural disaster. But instead of giving up, they pivot. They flatten what’s left into a gingerbread cookie tent, add a little pretzel campfire out front, and transform catastrophe into creativity. Judges call it one of the most imaginative entries.

Moral of the story:

When your gingerbread house collapses, sometimes you don’t need more icing. Sometimes you just need to rebrand it as a tent.

Exhibit D: The Great Gingerbread Crime Scene

Not every mishap is accidental. In one city’s festive downtown display, a beautifully crafted, oversized gingerbread house—part of a public holiday event—is vandalized. The damage tops $1,000. Gumdrop trim smashed. Candy windows broken. Royal icing smeared like a crime-drama prop. The community is outraged. Police get involved. Local news runs the headline equivalent of: “WHO WOULD DO THIS TO A GIANT COOKIE HOUSE?”

It’s heartbreaking… and also very on-brand for humanity that we will:

- build a fragile, highly breakable edible structure in public

- be shocked when someone cannot resist the urge to mess with it

Gingerbread House Day, it turns out, has a true-crime spinoff.

Honorable Mention: The Universal Pinterest Fail

Beyond the headlines, the internet is full of anonymous gingerbread tragedies:

- Roofs that look fine until gravity remembers they exist.

- Walls that meet at 93° or 107°, but never 90°.

- Houses where one side is so overloaded with candy it slowly leans like an edible Tower of Pisa.

- Entire kits that end up looking less “winter wonderland” and more “post-apocalyptic

cookie village.”

It’s so common that “gingerbread house fail” is its own seasonal genre of meme. People

post their masterpieces and their disasters side by side, captioned with something like:

“Nailed it.”

So… Why Do We Keep Doing This?

For a holiday that reliably produces chaos, Gingerbread House Day is surprisingly

wholesome.

We keep coming back to it because:

- It’s low-stakes failure. When the roof caves in, nobody gets fired. You just eat the

evidence.

- It’s collaborative. Kids, friends, families, coworkers all gather around the same sticky

table.

- It’s funny. Disasters are stories. And every year, new stories are baked into existence.

In a season that can get weirdly polished and pressure-filled, gingerbread houses are a reminder that not everything has to come out picture-perfect. Sometimes the best memories are created with crooked chimneys, sagging walls, and way too many gumdrops on one side.

How to Properly Celebrate Gingerbread House Day

If you want to honor the true spirit of the holiday:

1. Gather your people – family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, random volunteers.

2. Get a kit or bake from scratch, then immediately overestimate your abilities.

3. Declare very serious, completely arbitrary rules (earthquake tests, blindfolds, no

using your dominant hand, etc.).

4. Document everything. The world needs more gingerbread blooper reels.

5. When it inevitably collapses, raise a mug of something warm and say:

 “Behold, our glorious failure. Let’s eat it.”

Because the secret of Gingerbread House Day isn’t in perfect candy architecture. It's in the laughter when the walls fall down—and the fact that everybody still shows up next year to try again.

TONIGHT Mike Williams shares his song

"Candy Cane Fireteam"

On Gingerbread Day we brief like a mission,

kits on the counter, kids in position.

Laughter for orders, no one at attention,

just sugar and chaos in every direction.

We’ve seen real roofs blown, walls turned to dust,

sandbags and shrapnel where hope wasn’t trust.

When this sweet little cottage starts leaning once more,

it barely dents anything deep in the core.

We call out the roles like a squad on the floor:

kids run décor, I’m icing and more.

Frosting runs sideways, gumdrops go wide,

“Wouldn’t pass Fallujah,” someone jokes on the side.

We’ve patched worse at night with less in the pack,

hemorrhage and heartache you can’t take back.

Here, when the house fails, no one shouts “MEDIC!”—

we just eat the ruins, low-stakes, comedic.

The wreck becomes a tent by a pretzel-stick fire,

a field-expedient fix we can’t help but admire.

Crooked windows, leaning door,

still the safest house I’ve seen in war.

On Gingerbread Day our walls don’t stand straight,

but we’re all still breathing, and that’s pretty great.

Whatever traditions with family you celebrate,

Laughter is healing together we make.

Warriors for Life (WFL) Online "Mike Check" edition presented by Victory for Veterans, Inc. (VFV) — Friday (TONIGHT), December 12, 2025, @ 3:00 PM PT, 4:00 PM MT, 5:00 PM CT, & 6:00 PM ET

Join Zoom Meeting:  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83145057228

Thank you,

Mike Williams,

Army Combat Medic Veteran, Music Writer/Producer, & Volunteer Facilitator, Victory for Veterans, Inc. (VFV)

"Honor & Respect Always — Warriors for Life!"