A taste of pandemic in baking gingerbread

GINGERLY DISTANT Among the entries in a gingerbread baking competition in Stockholm, Sweden, is a scene showing two figures observing physical distancing while sharing a park bench. —REUTERS

STOCKHOLM — With the theme of distance, this year’s gingerbread house baking competition in Sweden was bound to feature coronavirus restrictions one way or another.

But some of the nation’s bakers found eye-catching ways to illustrate the year of the pandemic.

With a laptop on his sleigh, Santa chatted on Skype to three piglets in one creation, while another showed Greta Thunberg with her school strike for climate placard at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, alongside planes grounded by the virus.

Online exhibition

The exhibition, usually thronged with wide-eyed children and adults marveling at the culinary creations, is normally held at Sweden’s Museum of Architecture and Design but was moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other entries displayed in the three-dimensional scans created by the organizers showed lighthouses, the planets of the solar system, and online calls between grandparents and grandchildren.

One baker reproduced the head of Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell—widely seen as the architect of the country’s light-touch pandemic strategy—five times.

The reason, the baker explained, was he wanted to be sure to get the social distancing message across.