Gingerbread (charity) her marriage, Tessa Fothergill, a mother from London struggling with economic difficulties as a single parent, set up a local self-help group for others in a similar position. Fothergill was featured in the "Sunday Times", and the response from other single parents resulted in the creation of Gingerbread as a grassroots organisation providing community-level support for single parents. The name 'Gingerbread' came about after Fothergill saw a cafe called 'Golden Age Gingerbread' and liked the name. The National Council for One Parent Families and Gingerbread merged in 2007, and relaunched under the name Gingerbread in 2009. Head offices for Gingerbread
Gingerbread house were baked as ginger snap cookies and gained favour as Christmas tree decorations. The tradition of making decorated gingerbread houses started in Germany in the early 1800s. According to certain researchers, the first gingerbread houses were the result of the well-known Grimm's fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel" in which the two children abandoned in the forest found an edible house made of bread with sugar decorations. After this book was published, German bakers began baking ornamented fairy-tale houses of lebkuchen (gingerbread). These became popular during Christmas, a tradition that came to America with Pennsylvanian German immigrants. According to other food