(HI! Welcome to Caterpillar Steps, a newsletter by the writer and photographer Corbin Smith. For many years now, my friend Tasha and her sisters Shelby and Neva have done an annual gingerbread house construction competition at Christmas, and for every one of these years, I have taken it upon myself to both vote in the contest and submit a brief essay about the entries. I have become devoted to this task in a manner that I have been devoted to very few other things. This year I have decided to post my essay here, because I need to fill the content maw or destroy myself emotionally. I doubt I will employ subscriptions here, but if you like the newsletter and want to buy me a treat, you can feel free to deposit some cheddar in my Venmo account, @BigCorbs. Also feel free to share.)
There is simply no way around it: this is a masterful interior. Unbelievably detailed work on those presents, the tree, the fireplace made from wafers and gummies. A swift hand and a subtle touch, the work of a true master who has been at this for a long time.
In a way, our photo format is almost an insult to this masterpiece. Perhaps, you might think, I am being led astray by the format it is necessarily presented to me in. It poses a philosophical question about judging this work, or any work of art: do we judge the house or the photo of the house?
If I was there, in person, at Tasha’s house in Eastern Olympia, Washington (I have been there before, even slept there: we are close friends.) would it transform my thinking on this matter? Would the depths of the work, the sense of the house in three dimensional space, take my breath away, leave me dumbstruck, weeping with joy?
Is even looking at the house from the outside a proper measurement? Can the only true objective measurement of this house be the viewer being shrunk down, placed in the house, and given five minutes to be in the house,to truly experience the interior?
Is that even enough? Maybe one would have to spend a night in the house? A week?Perhaps the only way we can really judge this work of gingerbread architecture is to experience a whole Christmas there. Or maybe it needs to go even further: maybe the only proper judge of this house would be someone who LIVED in the house, got married, made love to their wife in front of the roaring gummy fire, make children with this lovemaking, raise them from infancy, experience the ups and downs of life with them, stare their child, the one person who they are compelled to love, stare them in the face and scream I HATE YOU at the top of their lungs, to celebrate birthdays and graduations and heal heartbreaks and guide them through homework.
Can the only true judge of this piece be a person who, living in this house, enters the wilds of middle age, and, finding themselves wanting, goes to a small gingerbread hi-fi store in the gingerbread city adjacent to the gingerbread suburb where this gingerbread house is, and buys an expensive record player, a massive, elite quality analog hi-fi setup, two big speakers for the ultimate in warm, crispy vinyl sound, set it up in the living room, place a needle on the waxe and just close their eyes while they’re taking away by a 180 Gram copy of Bob Dylan’s 1966 Studio Masterpiece Blonde on Blonde?
It’s possible. But unfortunately, that is not something I can do. I am a man looking at a photo. Anything I have written above is pure fantasy. I can't get smaller. I have no wife. I have no immediate plans to produce children. My record player is in storage and frankly it’s a piece of shit. And so, we see the impressive interior detail, we recognize a degree of mastery, we clap, but we are limited by what we can experience. Great art is not the product of mastery. It is the product of genius.
There is simply no way around this: in my many years judging this noble competition, there has never been a better feature than the caramel reindeer seen above. It has pretzels for horns, a kind smile, and evocative legs. One look at the comments on our contest will tell you what people see, what they feel, when they see this reindeer:
(the deer is clearly not chocolate, but that is besides the point.)
EVEN PEOPLE WHO FIND THEMSELVES SWEPT AWAY BY A’S INTERIOR ARE CONCEDING THE REINDEER, FOLKS:
Is she elegant? No. But she is ICONIC. She is the joy of the holidays formed into caramel, given a nice lil’ smile. All children love her, all adults are warmed and comforted by her smile. This piece could be all reindeer and it would still compete: the fact that it also manages an elegant, balanced house for the reindeer to stand in front of? Well, folks, it brings it right over the top. House A is excellent, a winner in any other year. But we cannot, SHOULD NOT, hide from the pure joy that B, and its heroic reindeer pal, brings into our hearts and our hearths. Merry Christmas, house B: you are this year’s recipient of Corbin Smith’s vote in the Leader/Norton/Swindle Gingerbread House Throwdown.