Welch: The gingerbread hoax
There’s just something irresistible about a gingerbread house — especially at Christmastime. Why?
Gingerbread houses are stuck in our collective subconscious thanks to a beloved fairy tale about somebody who lived in one.
Collective subconscious? Does the term give you pause? I made it up. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe it’s Carl Jung’s theory and, misnamed or not, I am poised to mangle it. Either way, both Jung and a fairy tale gingerbread house are permanent parts of my faulty long-term memory.
Did the witch in Hansel and Gretel dwell in a gingerbread house? Or did she operate a gingerbread jail? Didn’t she incarcerate Hansel and Gretel in some sort of structure? Did they eat their way out when they discovered it was gingerbread? That doesn’t sound quite right.
On second thought, wasn’t she feeding them well, fattening them for slaughter? Didn’t they trick her into thinking they weren’t gaining weight by holding out a chicken bone instead of a finger when she wanted to check their body fat? I think so. She was legally blind, or they couldn’t have fooled her so easily.
Hansel and Gretel ultimately escaped, but I can’t remember how. Seems like they got lost in the first place when birds ate their breadcrumb trail. Maybe those same birds felt guilty and, like carrier pigeons, took a message back to civilization to get someone to come to the aid of the trapped duo.
Do children still read that fanciful tale? Or is it banned? The witch is a disgrace to her gender, and sweets are glorified. If I could accurately remember the story, other unacceptable messages might emerge.
INTERNET PAUSE.
Wow. Hansel and Gretel is packed with all sorts of meanings for anyone with a knack for reading between the lines.
My misguided version doesn’t quite match the story recorded by the grim Brothers Grimm in 1812, but I’m not the only one who’s altered the scenario. Some Russians have even worked Baba Yaga into the outcome.
All told, here’s what takes the cake:
In 1963, to mark the 100th anniversary of Jacob Grimm’s death, German author Hans Traxler published “Die Wahrheit uber Hansel und Gretel.” (Put two dots over that “u.”) Translated that’s “The Truth About Hansel and Gretel.”
Traxler concocted a teacher, Georg Ossegg, and wrote an extremely convincing account describing Ossegg’s discovery of a story from the 1600s about a baker and his sister, Hans and Grete Metzler, who murdered Katharina Schraderin to steal her lebkuchen (gingerbread) recipe. In the Spessart Forest, intrepid investigator Ossegg found the charred remains of Schraderin’s house, lebkuchen recipe included, not to mention her skeleton.
The lesson of Traxler’s modern-day fairy tale:
Come up with a good hoax and people will believe you because they want to. Fabricate artifacts, mention real places and give the characters first and last names. Your lie will live forever. Traxler’s does.
For good measure, throw in a perfect gingerbread recipe to tug at the heartstrings and please the palates of even your skeptics.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Welch: The gingerbread hoax
