My family started making gingerbread houses when I was... well, about this big... My apologies to my brother for the embarrassing photo, as well as to our neighborhood friend who got cropped out of the picture by my mom. Anyway, when I was growing up, making a gingerbread house was synonymous with our Christmas celebration. It was a family affair... brainstorming together about ideas for a design, my dad and brother (the engineers of the family) coming up with a cardboard model, my mom baking the various pieces, and yours truly as the decoration expert. Then all of us teamed up to eat it before our cats got to it. We made various houses, churches, a train station, a castle, a lighthouse, an airport... you get the idea. It was a fun way to spend our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, especially since we lived far away from extended family and usually celebrated on our own. Even after moving away from home, I continued to make gingerbread houses, or at least gingerbread cookies, each year. It just didn't feel like Christmas without it. We've passed up our one year anniversary of moving to Japan, so by now I've had two birthdays here, two Thanksgivings, and now we're in our second Christmas season. Last Christmas we were still in ultra-survival mode... still in the throws of culture shock and in the middle of moving into our current apartment (our third move in two months). I couldn't read the buttons on my microwave oven, let alone track down ingredients to make gingerbread dough. My rolling pin was in storage along with our Christmas tree. I figured that I got a pass to skip it that year. But this year, this year was going to be different. I started in November... asking a friend who was traveling to Japan in December to bring me molasses. Checking my grocery store for ginger and nutmeg and cloves. Looking everywhere for Crisco. By now I could ask for help and read most of the labels on what I was buying. My pint-sized helper was a year older and actually able to help a teeny tiny bit. We were set. I planned to bake my first batch of cookies for a Christmas party a few days after my last class of the semester. I had also invited a Japanese friend over to decorate cookies, and then I planned to make a small house with Sam. I figured that my one precious jar of molasses would just barely make it. Two days before the party, I made my dough. I had to substitute butter for shortening and convert cups to grams, but I figured that I did it right. But when I got to the part where it was supposed to turn from goo to dough, it just didn't. "Oh well, must have been the melted butter," I thought as I put it in the fridge to chill overnight. The next day I tried to roll the cookies during Sam's nap... Gingerbread cookies... FAIL! It was a gooey, sticky mess. Apparently room temperature goo and cold goo are equally hard to roll into cookies. I started to cry. It wasn't just the cookie dough. It was Christmas. It was the rationed-out molasses, the plans, the effort, the disappointment, all rolled into one sticky mess on my counter. This sort of thing isn't supposed to happen to the seasoned missionary. (Ha!) And to top it all off, Arthur was out of town for the weekend, and I was juggling all this baking with dragging our two-year-old to Christmas events and year-end parties. I talked to a missionary friend and mentor... "What did I do wrong? Where can I buy more molasses? Did I use too much butter? How did I ruin something I've been making since I was eight years old?" I'm not sure how, but somehow by the grace of God, she figured out over the phone that I used "weak" flour (薄力粉) instead of "strong" flour (強力粉). Apparently ALL the characters on the bag were important. So much for being on a break from Japanese lessons! I salvaged my dough to make drop cookies for the party the next day. And after dragging a reluctant toddler to several stores (no small feat in the winter without a car), I tried again with my strong flour and some overpriced shortening. Success! After decorating cookies with a friend and making a tiny gingerbread house as a family, it finally feels like Christmas around here. And perhaps more significantly, it finally feels like HOME. But even as I say that, I realize that sometimes having things stripped away makes you hunger more for what is truly real. I hope that our upside-down Christmas last year and my gooey gingerbread mess this year has helped me to cling more tightly to the One whose coming we celebrate instead of just longing for what makes me feel Christmasy in a foreign land.
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AboutWe're Arthur and Meg, and we serve with SEND International in Japan. Follow our story as we share about our lives and ministry. Categories
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Looking Back
November 2014
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