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Gingerbread village sweetens the season
Three-and-a-half-year-old twins Lucian and Orion Tash darted back and forth in front of the table displaying the gingerbread village at the Hyatt Regency Reston Hotel. The pair was following the railroad trains that wind through the miniature town, and stopped only long enough to allow their mother, Connie, to tie Orion's shoelace.
"They have trains at home," she said. "They love cars and trains and anything that moves as fast as they do."
The family came from Sterling for the traditional Thanksgiving buffet at the Reston Town Center hotel. But while the others were still enjoying the lavish spread, she said that the boys were much more excited about coming out to see the village and its trains.
Since 1991, the village has been on display at the hotel every year except last year, when the lobby was under renovation.
But, as marketing director Ray Messina recalled, the demand was so great that the staff was happy to mount it again this year, where it will be open for viewing 24 hours a day, seven days a week through Saturday, Dec. 29.
The village has plenty of adult admirers, too.
"It's gorgeous," Alison Shipp, of Loudoun County, exclaimed. And the grown-ups may appreciate it all the more, she added, because, "We have some idea of how much work it was."
The kitchen and engineering staffs share the effort, Messina reported. And a demanding task it is. In addition to performing their ordinary duties, four or five people work 45 days to assemble the houses, and then another five to seven days to erect the village.
"We make the dough and roll it out into thin sheets a little less than 1/2-inch thick and cut out each piece of the house," he said. "Each wall with its windows cut out is shaped before baking, and the dough is then baked so it hardens. We then assemble the houses with frosting to hold the walls and roofs together."
The nine buildings include a white frosted church and a gingerbread ski chalet, measuring from about one to two feet high. They stand on a 12 x 24-foot stage, against a painted backdrop. The construction schedule calls for 100 pounds of flour, 125 pounds of powdered sugar, 30 pounds of assorted candies and 15 pounds of pretzels.
Like many visitors, Collin Shipp, 8, wondered aloud if the edible edifices were eaten after the Christmas season. Messina reported that they must be thrown away.
The same goes for many of the moving parts, like the bobsleds that sail downhill.
"After running 24-7 for months, things get worn out," he explained. "We have to replace them as necessary." The village has expanded, too, with bigger houses and longer tracks this year.
The effort was all worthwhile, judging by the reactions of Seamus Lynch, 7, of Reston and his uncle, Michael, who was visiting from New Jersey.
"He has trains at home and wanted to see this one," Michael explained, while Seamus stared in rapture as they went by. But that was not the family's only reason for sharing the occasion. "We do things like this together," he said, "and they become a tradition as time goes on."
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