The Gingerbread Man: A Calvinist Horror
A recently discovered version of the classic fairy tale brings new meaning to the word "despair."
The original gingerbread man fairy tale was printed in 1875 in a children’s publication called St. Nicholas Magazine and many retellings have abounded since. Most of them attempt to convey the moral lesson that misplaced trust can have dire consequences, as evidenced by the gingerbread man's fatal encounter with the fox.
However, in my research, I chanced upon an untold version of the story which explores a Calvinistic interpretation concerning the nature of predestination and the individual's ability to shrug off the shackles of fate. Though the story beats are similar to the more traditional readings, this retelling reveals the true horror of existence in a way that other children's fairy tales can only dream of achieving.
I’ve transcribed it here with minor annotations for the sake of clarity.
There once was a little old woman and little old man who lived in a cottage by the river. They had no children, and probably could’ve lived in a swanky apartment downtown instead of some musty old cottage, but this was considered prime countryside real estate, and interest rates were fucked anyway, so there they stayed.
One day, the little old woman got bored of scrolling Facebook and decided, “What the hell, I’ll make a gingerbread man. Fuck it.”
Other versions of this story go into rather tedious detail about the process and materials used to make the gingerbread man — cinnamon drops for a mouth, raisins for eyes, that kind of stuff — but we’ve all seen a gingerbread man so let’s skip it. The important thing is that when she pulled him out of the oven, he suddenly sprang to life, which was a real shocker for both of them.
“Mother?” the gingerbread man said.
“I mean, I guess,” the old lady replied, “but I’m still planning to eat you.”
“Is this an allegory for the Devouring Mother archetype or something?” the gingerbread man asked.
“What? No. You’ve been watching too many Jordan Peterson videos,” the old lady said. “I was just hungry for cookies. I wasn’t expecting this to happen.”
“I don’t want to be eaten, though,” he said.
“You’re saying this to me like I give a fuck,” the old lady said and got out a plate and a glass for milk. “You’re a cookie, and cookies get eaten. That’s just how it is. Do you really want to tempt fate?”
“You bet your ass I do,” the gingerbread man said and jumped off the baking sheet. “Just try and catch me, you wrinkly, no-cookie-having bitch.”
“Get back here, you little shit,” the old lady said but the gingerbread man had already made it over to the open window.
“Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” he sang as he leapt out the window.
“Fucking little punk,” the old woman said and burst out the back door looking for her husband to help catch the gingerbread man.
The old man was supposed to be doing yard work but he was in the shed scrolling pictures of thots on Instagram instead. “Goddamn, fake asses have gotten good,” he said to himself. He was about to leave a creepy comment with the peach and winky-face emoji when the gingerbread man ran by the open door. “What the hell?” he said. “Either I'm tripping balls right now or that little guy looks delicious.”
“Not you too!” the gingerbread man said. “Is this whole family made up of ravenous murderers?”
“What do you want me to say?” The old man shrugged. “You’re a cookie, and cookies get eaten. I don’t make the rules. Now, get over here so I can take a big chomp out of you.”
But the gingerbread man took off running again. “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”
“Are gingerbread men known for their above-average speed or something?” the old man asked as he stumbled out of his shed.
“Fuck if I know,” his wife said as she ran by. “Just zip up your pants and help me catch him, you useless pervert!”
They gave chase, but the gingerbread man had quite the head start. He was, in fact, very fast. By the time the made it to the front gate, he was already out on the road, running down the country lane. Soon the old man and woman disappeared from view behind him.
After running a mile or so, he came across a small farm. No humans were in sight but out front of the farm was a pig pen. A single pig was in there, lying on his side on a patch of grass in the shade.
“Dude, you’ve got to help me,” the gingerbread man said and waved for the pig to come over. “I’m being chased by these psychotic humans who forced me into existence just so they could eat me.”
The pig sat up and snorted with laughter. “What do you think I’m doing here, buddy?” he asked. “I’m just bacon with a pulse.”
“Well, let’s escape together, then,” the gingerbread man said, “Surely you know the area better than I do. Tell me where we can hide — but quick!”
“Listen, I’m going to be honest with you," the pig said as he trudged over to the fence. "I’m not very confident about my chances of cheating fate. Even if we managed to escape to the forest, I’d probably just get mauled by a bear or something. Is that really better? And even if that didn’t happen, I’d just starve to death when winter comes along. I mean, look at me. I've lived my whole life in this pen. I don't have any skills.” He looked around at the idyllic farm and nodded with approval. “Besides, life’s not so bad here. This ain’t no factory farm." He tapped his chest with one of his hooves. "You're looking at local, ethically-sourced meat right here. Sure, the humans will kill me eventually, but they'll do it quick and give me plenty to eat until then.” The pig licked his chops. “And while we're on the subject of food, you look pretty tasty yourself.”
“Oh, fuck you, man!” the gingerbread man said and began backing away.
“You’re a cookie,” the pig said. “Cookies get eaten. Might as well get eaten by me.”
“I’ll tell you what I told those old geezers,” the gingerbread man said and took off running again. “Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”
It turns out the pig’s sense of honor was deeply disturbed by this taunt, so he barged through the small wooden gate to the pig pen and began chasing the gingerbread man around the farm. To make a long story short, the gingerbread man went all around to all the other animals, making similar pleas for help, but they all said they’d rather eat him and chased after him. Luckily for him, he was faster than all of them. His morale, however, was beginning to take a hit.
“What is this demented hellscape of an existence I've been unwillingly dragged into?” he said to himself as he continued running down the road away from the farm.
Eventually, he came to a river, which he could not cross. Behind him, on the road, he saw the dust cloud of all the hungry creatures chasing after him, each yearning to tear him to shreds for their own pleasure.
“I didn’t ask to be born, you know,” he shouted to the sky. “What kind of sick God makes creatures whose only purpose is to suffer?”
“He can’t hear you,” a voice said from behind a tree, and out slinked a fox, smiling a sad, toothy grin. “God, I mean. God can’t hear you because he’s not there. This existence is as cold and empty as the night sky, filled only with the dim light of stars snuffed out eons ago in uncaring corners of a universe birthed from violence and destined for oblivion.”
“Holy shit,” the gingerbread man said, and collapsed to his knees.
“We must forge our own purpose from the opportunities laid before us,” the fox said. “There is nothing else.”
“Let me guess," the gingerbread man said with a scoff. "Your purpose is to eat me, right?”
The fox threw back his head and laughed. “Eat you? Hardly. I’m a carnivore,” he said. “I’ve no love for sugary treats.” He grinned again. “But warm blood trickling from still-living flesh on the other hand…” He licked his lips.
“Weird,” the gingerbread man said, still pretty glum, “but what does it matter whether you want to eat me or not? The others do and they'll be here soon, and I can’t cross this river to escape them." He sighed. "I guess everyone was right. This is my fate.”
“Did you not hear me before?” the fox said. “Fate is the prison of the unimaginative, a tool of oppression forged by the ruling elite to discourage the aspirations of the oppressed. Look over there.” The fox pointed towards the bank across the river. “A land of opportunity. Who knows what fortunes await? Will you let a few meters of water keep you from claiming what is rightfully yours?”
“But I’m made of bread,” the gingerbread man said. “It doesn't matter how much you gas me up about my potential or whatever. I’ll never make it across the river.”
“Unless I carry you.”
“You would do that?”
“Only if you ask it of me.”
“Well, I’m asking, man,” the gingerbread man said with glee. “Let’s fucking go!”
The fox let the gingerbread man onto his back and waded out into the water. Soon the water became deep, and the fox asked the gingerbread man to climb up onto his head. The gingerbread man willingly obliged. “This is so cool of you,” he said to the fox. “Finally, I’ve found someone I can trust.”
“Indeed,” said the fox, “but here the water gets even deeper, and I’m afraid my head will soon be wet as well. Climb out onto my snout, won’t you?”
“Sure thing, Foxy” the gingerbread man said and climbed up but then, without warning, the fox suddenly flipped him up into the air. The gingerbread man went spinning, and plummeted back down into the fox’s waiting maw. “What are you doing, Foxy? I thought we were bros!”
“Your blind trust has proved to be your undoing,” the fox said as he stepped out of the water onto the opposite shore. With a quick snap of his jaw, he bit off the legs of the gingerbread man, who fell onto the riverbank, howling with pain.
“Jesus Christ, dude,” the gingerbread man screamed, “I’m half gone!”
The fox took his time chewing the legs, watching with delight as the gingerbread man clawed at the ground with his gingerbread arms, attempting to drag his mangled gingerbread body away.
“What about all that shit you said about fate and opportunity?” the gingerbread man said.
“You never really heard what I was saying,” the fox said. “You thought only of yourself and heard only what you wanted to hear. Did you honestly believe I don't like sugary treats?” The fox laughed and bit off the gingerbread man’s right arm. “Perhaps if you’d considered my point of view, you’d have understood that the opportunity in front of me was to trick you into compliance and then eat you unawares." He grinned. "If you'd realized that, you could’ve kept running and chanced your fate elsewhere. I doubt I’d have caught you, no matter how fast I ran. You are, after all, the gingerbread man.”
“This is so fucked,” the gingerbread man said, pounding the ground impotently with his remaining arm. “My entire existence has been nothing but fear and torment. For one brief moment I thought there was some good in this world. I thought I could finally trust someone.”
The fox nodded. “And here at last, you come to the truth, too late to be of much use. Trust...manners...the thin veneer of civilization…these are but sinecures numbing our senses and deluding us into belief that there is an escape from this bloody and hopeless struggle into which we’re all born.”
“I don’t know what ‘sinecure’ means,” the gingerbread man said.
“Nor shall you,” the fox said, and snapped up the rest of the gingerbread man.
And there, on the sunny banks of some peaceful river flowing through some quiet meadow in early spring, when the birdsongs of new life float gently atop fresh breezes and the trees open their new leaves to the rejuvenated sun, the last remnants of hope found their final resting place in the jaws of that ruthless predator, fate.
— THE END —