Right before the holidays, Office Images held its annual Ugly Holiday Sweater Party featuring a Gingerbread Cookie decorating contest on December 20, 2017. Take a look at our photos; which one is your favorite ugly sweater? Happy Holidays from everyone at Office Images. We hope your holidays will be filled with joy and laughter through the New Year!

The Un-Christmassy Origin of Gingerbread Houses by Smithsonian.com 
Like most holiday traditions, gingerbread houses are big business: Wilton Industries, a popular confectionery-making company, reports that it created over two million gingerbread house kits in 2011. For those who are more DIY-inclined, domestic gurus, Martha Stewart, offer recipes and plans for making your own sugary domicile. But in spite of gingerbread house-decorating’s cozy holiday connotations, the roots of this tradition may lie in the folktale, Hansel and Gretel. The gingerbread house-building contests in the United States today do bear some resemblance to the “gingerbread fairs” that were hosted by some cities in England and France during the Middle Ages and later, writes Amanda Fiegl for Smithsonian.com. Although the origin of these fairs was simply that gingerbread was a tasty and ubiquitous medieval treat, it did offer an opportunity to get together and enjoy a delicious treat–and what could be more Christmassy than that?

To learn more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/un-christmassy-origin-gingerbread-houses-180967461/#GuXxBAmGTjz1kp2j.99