Gingerbread & Joy
The Holly Jolly Bakery Company boasted an impressive array of sweets, cakes, and pies, but they were famous for their gingerbread cookies. Every day, the display window would be packed with gingerbread men and women, boys and girls, all uniquely decorated with gumdrop buttons and clothes made of frosting and icing. By day, the gingerbread people entertained the bakery customers from their perch in the window, enticing them to come inside and try their sweets, but by night– the gingerbread people awoke and had the whole bakery to themselves.
They would sing, dance, and have lively gingerbread parties with the other baked goods. Some of the gingerbread people even liked to explore outside the bakery. A popular hangout spot was the puddle behind the shop in the alleyway. Every winter, that puddle frosted over, providing the gingerbread people with a glorious ice rink for them to skate on.
G.G., a particularly adventurous gingerbread girl, was known to be the fastest ice skater in the whole bakery! Every winter night, she’d lace up her candy cane ice skates and take to the ice, blowing past all the other gingerbread people.
“Slow down!” they’d say, but G.G. wouldn’t pay them any mind. The way she saw it was that they only had a limited time to skate, so why waste a second of it!
She’d go on like this all night, skating for hours past when the other gingerbread people had decided to call it a night.
“Be careful, G.G.,” they’d tell her. “You’re gonna skate too fast one of these days.”
But G.G. didn’t listen. She skated so fast that she couldn’t even see the other gingerbread people! She couldn’t even see her surroundings. Most nights, it was all just a blur of lights and colors.
One night, G.G. was skating exceptionally fast when she noticed a slight pain in her leg. She looked down and, to her horror, saw a small chunk of icing chip off from her leg and fall to the ice. For a moment, she slowed down to make sure her leg was okay. It had a small indent taken out of it, but the rest of her looked okay.
It shook her up, but not enough for her to slow down. No, not one bit. Until the next night, one of her gumdrop buttons fell off! She slowed down just a tad to see if she could stick it back on, but it was no use.
The next night, she skated so fast that a whole chip of gingerbread fell off her other leg!
“Slow down, G.G.,” the others cried. “You’re crumbling!”
No, G.G. thought to herself. She couldn’t crumble! This was what she was made for! If she didn’t skate fast, then what was the point of skating at all!?
So she didn’t listen, and the next night, her whole right foot crumbled right off! She tumbled and slid across the ice. The others surrounded her to help, but G.G. couldn’t face the embarrassment. She grabbed her foot and hopped back off into the bakery.
The next night, the baker used some icing to glue her foot back into place. G.G. was devastated. Even if she could skate as fast as she did before her injury, she knew that pushing too hard would just result in her foot falling off again, or worse.
That night, for the first time ever, G.G. stayed inside the bakery as the other gingerbread people went out to ice skate. She felt so alone. She really thought that if she couldn’t skate fast, then no one would pay her any attention.
After an hour, G.G. was surprised to see all her fellow gingerbread skaters had come back early.
“G.G., come out with us,” they said. “We want to show you something.”
“Why should I? You all will just laugh at how slow I skate,” G.G. answered.
Then, one particularly brave and small gingerbread girl stepped forward. “You don’t need to skate fast to have fun,” she said. “Please, come out with us.”
Reluctantly, G.G. followed them back out to the ice rink.
“Take my hand,” said the little girl.
G.G. did, and off they skated. It was strange, going so slow. At first, G.G. felt ashamed and honestly, a little bored.
“Just take a breath,” said the little girl. “Look around you.”
So, G.G. did. She saw the other gingerbread people, not blurs, but real people: talking with each other, skating, laughing, slipping, and falling. Almost all of them had smiles on their faces. Then G.G. looked away from the ice rink. Christmas lights hung down from the back bakery window. She had never noticed that before. Gently, snow began to fall.
“This… this is kinda nice,” G.G. admitted.
The little girl let go of her hand and giggled. “Chase me?” she asked, playfully.
G.G. smiled. The little girl took off on the ice. She was faster than she looked, but still, it was a snail’s pace compared to what G.G. was used to. The little gingerbread girl weaved between the other skaters. Every so often, she’d stop to catch a snowflake on her tongue or give a high five to another gingerbread child.
After a while, G.G. got the hang of it. She caught her own snowflakes, loving how the cold ice melted on her tongue. She slowed down to chat to an old gingerbread friend of hers from a long time ago. She even took a moment to skate to the very center of the ice and do a twirl.
G.G. looked around at the ice rink, at all the smiling faces that she could now see with her own two eyes. The joy was everywhere. From that moment on, G.G. resolved to slow down, just a little, every now and then. After all, there was a lot of fun to be had; she didn’t want to speed right past it.