The holidays are a time for family, friends, gift-giving and… competitions? Oh yes! During the festive season, there are a number of ways that people like to pit themselves against one another, from Christmas light contests to ugly holiday sweater competitions. Another common holiday battle is gingerbread house contests. If you’re holding an ugly holiday sweater contest, you’ll need an ugly holiday sweater contest survey to determine a winner. Here’s how to started!
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History of Gingerbread Houses
The practice of using gingerbread – which is just preserved ginger baked into crisps – to create edible houses originated in Germany in the 1800s. German bakers based their creations on Hansel and Gretel, the dark Brothers Grimm fairytale in which two children discover an edible home made of bread and sugar. Gingerbread houses became synonymous with Christmas because ginger snap cookies were also popular around this time of year.
As time wore on, baking gingerbread houses became a way to express creativity, and a variety of other sweets were incorporated into the designs. Like any artform, bakers – both amateur and professional – began to get competitive with their gingerbread house designs, building them bigger (and sweeter!). Today, gingerbread house competitions are a holiday staple in many countries and in many households.
The popularity of gingerbread house competitions has grown so much that the Food Network even hosts a Holiday Gingerbread Showdown competition on television. The sizes of gingerbread houses are now even in the Guinness Book of World Records. According to Guinness’ website, the largest gingerbread house ever built, pictured below, was created in Bryan, Texas, USA, and had an internal volume of 1,110.1 m³ (39,201.8 ft³). The house was 18.28 m (60 ft) long, 12.8 m (42 ft) wide and 3.07 m (10.1 ft) tall at its highest point.
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Creating Your Gingerbread House Contest
Gingerbread house contests are hosted at homes, company parties, community events, and more. Many gingerbread house contests are just for fun or bragging rights, while others can have significant prizes, meaning voting on the best gingerbread house can get heated! To make sure the competition is fair, you’ll want to be sure the judging criteria is clear to participants.
For example, if the contest is large, you might want to consider different categories, such as:
- Largest gingerbread house
- Tastiest looking gingerbread house
- Most innovative structure
- Best use of color
- Best use of ingredients
- Best use of technology (if contestants can add lights, etc)
You’ll also want to identify judging criteria. Sometimes, specific people are chosen to judge the gingerbread house decorating contest; other times, everyone at the event has a vote. Remember to specify if there will be prizes. If prizes are substantial, like at a large community event, you’re likely to get a lot more participants. So, you might want to consider an entry fee for participating.
Designing Your Gingerbread House Contest Survey
Like the look of the gingerbread house contest survey with images above? It’s created with SurveyLegend’s online survey tool. Images of various gingerbread homes were uploaded and a confectionary background and font were added in the DESIGN stage.
It’s easy to create your own gingerbread survey with photos. Simply ask participants to take pictures of their gingerbread houses and submit them to you. Next, upload all of the participants’ images into your survey and share your survey link with others to collect votes. SurveyLegend will automatically tally up the votes in real time, which you can display live on your event page if you like to make the contest more fun and engaging. It won’t be long before you’ll have crowned a winner in your gingerbread house decorating contest!
Create Your FREE Gingerbread House Contest Survey Now!
How to Create Your Gingerbread House Contest Survey with SurveyLegend
- Login to your account
- Add a new survey, and navigate to the CREATE step.
- Use our picture-based question type (“Picture Selection”) by clicking on it.
- Click on the picture selection question that was just added, and then click on the “upload” button.
- Select all of your pictures at once from your computer, and then hit upload. Wait until the upload process is complete for all images.
- If you like, change the layout and size of gingerbread house photos using the settings on the left-hand side. You can also choose whichever voting type you prefer. People usually use the “Ranking” voting type and let people vote for their top 3 favorites.
- Go to the DESIGN step to change the look and feel of your survey (for example, you can choose a dark theme or upload your own background).
- Go to the CONFIGURE step and give your gingerbread house contest a good name so that you remember it. Also make sure you have this setting ON: “Limit number of participations” which will make sure people cannot vote multiple times to influence results.
- Finally, continue to the SHARE step, copy your competition link, and send it to your audience using SMS, Email, Facebook, Slack or whatever platform you like.
- When the distribution of your gingerbread contest survey is done, go to Live Analytics and watch as the results come in.
If you’re holding a holiday party with a gingerbread house exhibition, you can also use video projection to broadcast the live analytics page to all attendees. They can watch, in real-time, as the votes roll in. This makes your gingerbread house competition a lot more fun!
Start Creating Your Gingerbread House Contest Survey Now
Ready to create your gingerbread house contest voting form? Our surveys render beautifully on any screen, are customizable to your design preferences, and can limit voters to one answer so overly competitive creators don’t continue to vote for themselves. They can also be anonymous so there’s no feuding between friends! Start now with SurveyLegend and hold the best gingerbread house contest in town!
Have you ever made a gingerbread house? Was it for fun or part of a competition? We’d love to hear about your experience!
Create Your FREE Gingerbread House Contest Survey Now!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Gingerbread houses can last up to 12 months with proper storage and care. However, it should not be eaten past one month from creation.
Organize the contest within the community or amongst friends, family, and coworkers toward the end of November to give them plenty of time to plan their house and purchase gingerbread house confections. Set rules, categories, judging criteria, and prizes (if there will be prizes). Then, use SurveyLegend’s online survey tool to highlight all the participants’ gingerbread homes and allow people to vote for their favorite(s).
You can host fun contests for Easter and Halloween. Be sure to check out SurveyLegend’s Pumpkin Carving Contest Surveys, Costume Contest Surveys, and Easter Egg Decorating Contest Surveys.
