Like many people, we’ve found ourselves trying new things these last…oh, what’s it been, now— six years in quarantine? We’ve tried things we never thought were on the docket, like not visiting anyone or going anywhere, or not wearing pants while speaking with colleagues (sorry, friends), or shunting most major and minor holidays.

…like this one. I wanted to make this one. (I did not make this one.)

Perhaps it was the complete lack of Christmas this year— no travel, no family, no presents, no crowded concert halls full of people aerosolizing the Hallelujah Chorus— it was that lack of Christmas that pushed me to a brink I’d never previously known: I realized that for the first time in my life I wanted to make a gingerbread house.

No— this one. I wanted to make THIS one. (I did not make this one.)

Now, being 1) Jewish and 2) bad at baking, Christmas confections aren’t really my milieu, but neither is smelling my own tuna burps, and I’ve been doing that for a year, so maybe this could be a moment of enlarged milieux.

So I bought molasses and confectioners sugar, and a reusable pastry bag, and the dobobbies that go on the end of the reusable pastry bag, and I watched 50 videos online, and then, brimming with Christlike love (or at least Kahneman-like sunk cost fallacy), I traced templates, I measured and geometried, I bought horrible candy (lookin’ at you, dollar store spice drops and Red Hots), and spent hours mixing and rolling and baking dough so heavy I could barely lift it.

Then I spent hours more mixing up what amounted to spackling compound, spreading it over uneven surfaces, shoring up the weak points with corrugated cardboard, and telling myself it was pretty good for a first try. Right?

What I ended up with wasn’t quite what I had hoped. In fact, it made me wonder if I’d been too harsh on the nuts who denounce hysterically the War on Christmas. My gingerbread house could only be best described as a crime scene. So… I made like Sheryl Sandberg, and leaned in:

BREAKING NEWS:

It’s a crime that’s shaken a community. Early in the morning on December 23, 2020, SnowEllen Icy-Tubbs, a longtime exotic dancer at The Freezer, a club on the what some call the wrong side of the North Pole, was walking to her car, after a night of work. She’d made better money than usual—folks were in the holiday spirit—and she stopped briefly to count her dough.

Just then, from out of the shadows, a dark figure wielding a sharpened candy cane, confronted Icy-Tubbs and demanded the cash. Tubbs refused, and an altercation ensued, resulting, sadly, in a condition known as segmentation— fatal in snowpeople of her age (106 yrs).

Shocked and mourning, the town has opted to shut down Freezer operations, and demolish the site, but its clientele have vowed to seek “historic landmark” status for the building, which is made of Sweetdough, a thick, industrial half-inch gingerbread siding, comprising no corn syrup—only molasses (and cinnamon, for structure!).

Fans argue that architectural details, including now-crumbling Romanesque rainbow spice drop roof finials and rare Red Hot quoins, should be enough to keep the edifice from the wrecking ball. “You don’t see craftsmanship like this anymore,” said Officer Brisk Winters, who asked us to use an alias, as he, himself, is a frequent customer at The Freezer. “And since you’re not usin’ my real name, I’d just like to say that you don’t see craftsmanship like what put SnowEllen together, either; it’s such a shame she came apart.”

City historians are confident that elements of the structure, which was first built 150 years ago as St. Olaf’s School for the Frigid, can be salvaged, including the (Jolly) Ranch(er)-style windows, and much of the glossy egg white trim.

“Basically, the question we’re asking,” says former mayor Kyle Shivery, “is this: just because an ancient stripper gets shivved outside a dilapidated adult entertainment establishment, does that mean it’s better for the community to erase all the happy memories of said establishment? To just forget the cheer and…hope… the establishment brought to our residents? The Freezer offers something for everyone, from unique structural details, to a sense of fellowship, to up-close snow booty. It’s an institution.”

Impassioned residents hope to create a memorial fund in SnowEllen’s name, which will be used to preserve the building, and establish a scholarship to send high school students to architecture school and/or [North] Pole dancing classes.

“I’m just happy to see such a cold-blooded crime leading to positive outcomes,” former mayor Shivery says, “and I do think they’ll keep the building intact. You put so much work into something, you buy all the materials, you spend untold amounts of time—even if it’s not perfect—I do think they’ll keep it. At least until March.”