My wife found something interesting last week. She was doing a little internet surfing when she came across funny or unusual family Christmas and New Years traditions. I heard her take in a deep breath, and she said, "We've got to do this!"
After she told me what it was, I agreed.
You see, someone, somewhere out there has a tradition of taking the gingerbread house they build for Christmas and blowing it up on New Years Eve...literally. When she told me, I thought it was such a natural thing to do. I mean, you've got this building made of sweets and it's just sitting there. The longer it sits, the less you want to eat anything off it. Blowing it up solved the age-old question, "What are we going to do with the gingerbread house."
A couple of things. When the kids put the thing together, no one imagined we would be violently destroying it a week later. So, they built it well. And since we're not prone to blow things up, we didn't know the type of explosives we should use. I went shopping Saturday and found some things I thought would work.
Last night, just before and after midnight, we broke holes in the building's walls and placed our fireworks inside. The results were amazing. They lit up the culd-a-sac and when the smoke cleared, most of the building still stood (good construction...).
We decided we'll need to adopt this into our holiday traditions. Next year, we're going to do some planning. The kids will know that will happen to the house so they may make changes in how they put it together. We'll also do some investigating into which fireworks work best. We had a lot of fun last night. Everyone says they hope the new year will be bigger and better. At least for us and gingerbread houses at New Years, we've got a year to see if this is true.
