Gingerbread Men or Cannibalism

You know how sometimes you hear about traditions in a different culture and you think well that’s strange? Well have you ever thought of things in the American culture that may be seen that way through the eyes of people from different cultures?

 Prime example:

We baked a ton of Christmas cookies the other night, it’s a silly American tradition but it gave us a reason to make a ton of cookies and to have people over to decorate them. We then realized that we had over 100 cookies and thought it would be a great idea to send the home with the people who helped us decorate them and then pass them out to our neighbors.

We didn’t have cookie cutters so we had spent the whole day cutting our cookie dough into different Christmas shapes like Christmas trees and stars and wreaths and angels and of course we made gingerbread men.  Well have you ever tried to hand cut gingerbread men? I didn’t even attempt because believe me the trees were a struggle for me, but my teammate was doing awesome and although some looked a little like Chubaka we thought they all turned out pretty great.

Well, we sent the cookies home with our friend from our home stay and she brought them to share with all the other girls and the lovely Naniji who was our homestay mom.  So today when we went to visit Naniji, she was telling us thank you for the cookies but then started to say something about a chimpanzee, I knew immediately that she thought our gingerbread men were chimpanzees so I said in my best Hindi I could “small man”, I mean how else are you supposed to describe a gingerbread man?  Well she then started going on and on about how it was very bad that we made gingerbread men because she didn’t want to eat a little man then she said a lot of Hindi I didn’t understand and something about cannibalism. 

So then she asked us why we had decided to make her little men to eat, and I am sure there is a wonderful story behind why we make gingerbread men for Christmas or maybe not, but in that moment I was like it’s a Christmas tradition. And she then said why, and my teammate and I just said, we have no idea.

We all sat there laughing and she just kept saying no more little men, only make circles and stars then she again said something again about cannibalism.

 

So here is what I am learning about new cultures, I may see something that doesn’t make any sense to me, some tradition or something they do that seems so strange to me, but even if they have no reason for doing it I need to be open to the idea that it is just apart of their culture because I am sure I do things that makes no sense to them, something as small as making gingerbread men for Christmas which may be conveyed as cannibalism to someone not from America. Noted.