Grand tradition in gingerbread

For 30 years, Julia Espino McCullen has made gifts of gingerbread houses every Christmas Eve

Sure, Santa comes on Christmas Eve, but first, Grandma comes calling with gingerbread. So begins the annual tradition for Julia Espino McCullen, her kids, grandkids and great-grands.

Every year she bakes sheets of gingerbread in her Makiki home, packs them in boxes, then boards an airplane for Kauai bearing the walls and roofs of several gingerbread houses.

At the annual family gathering in Princeville on the 25th, the kids will decorate the minihomes and fill their real homes with ginger-scented holiday cheer.

McCullen's story was among the best submitted in our search for family stories that combine food with the traditions of the holidays. Many readers wrote of dishes made year after year, without which the holidays just wouldn't be the same.

Because we all know, food isn't just sustenance, it carries meaning and memories.

"Decorating gingerbread houses is a family Christmas tradition started 33 years ago when Isaac, grandchild No. 1, was 1-going-on-2-years-old," McCullen wrote. "As the family grew to nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, so did the number of gingerbread houses, and always an extra one or two for visiting friends."

On Dec. 22 each year, McCullen prepares two to three batches of dough from a 1974 Good Housekeeping recipe. The next day she rolls out the dough and bakes it, then packs the pieces into deep Liberty House gift boxes saved from before Macy's came to town. Early on the 24th she hand-carries the boxes aboard a flight to Kauai. "On Christmas Eve, when everyone is asleep, I assemble each house for each family to decorate on Christmas Day."

The decorating is a lively, competitive affair that gives the family a sense of belonging, McCullen's daughter, Donna Lei Kirkpatrick, says. "When the whole family partakes, there's a feeling of, 'This is right. This is what we are.'"