Lincoln's Mother might have fashioned a gingerbread man, rather than use a cookie cutter. It shows more individual character...and like Abe, is one tough cookie! I found this example:
I love gingerbread men. A tradition in my house. I hang homemade ones--and gingerbread pigs on my Xmas tree every year.
I'm not that fond of gingerbread unless it's an exceptionally good one. I've mad plenty of gingerbread houses with the grandsons...always a mess since they are so impatient.
Sacheen, I found your mention of gingerbread pigs, very interesting! I found a story, that I would like to share, called "My Sweet Marranito Memories". Click on the link, for the recipe, and more details. My Sweet Marranito Memories October 26, 2006|By Sandy Guerra-Cline Fort Worth Star-Telegram "My father was a mystery to me. I don't have a lot of memories of him. Like the other men who lived in the tidy little houses on Kosarek Street in Corpus Christi, he disappeared before dawn to go to work and didn't materialize till suppertime. After we ate, my father read the headlines or watched a little TV, and then he went to bed early so that he could get up and do it all over again. We rarely talked, and if we did, it was about school or something that couldn't be resolved in the Court of Mom: topics too mundane to be memorable. But I do remember our Sunday-morning drives to the panaderia -- walking in and breathing the warm, sugary air, with my chubby light-brown hand held in his. If I close my eyes and hold my breath, I can almost see my reflection in the old glass bakery cases edged in wood. There I am, clutching a gingerbread marranito -- "little pig." The woman behind the counter fills a large white sack with an assortment of Mexican pan dulce -- sweet bread -- for our breakfast table, but she always hands me my own brown pig wrapped in wax paper". Life wasn't perfect, but it was good. And somehow it became indescribably sweeter when I held a marranito and my dad's hand.