This Gingerbread Cowboy Ornament is 5 inches tall and hangs from a red ribbon loop. The Gingerbread Boy is wearing a light brown 10 gallon hat with red icing swirls on the crown and red trim around the brim. He has a white Sheriffs badge in the center of his chest and white icing swirls around his wrists. His pants are red glitter with green icing swirls. He has a green glitter shadow all around him. The Gingerbread Cowboy is twirling a light green rope. Select this link to view our Western Christmas Ornaments.
Gingerbread.
Gingerbread is a sweet that can take the form of a cake or a cookie in which the predominant flavors are ginger and raw sugar. Select this link to view our Miniature Gingerbread Ornaments.
As a cookie, gingerbread can be rolled into a thin, crisp cookie often called a ginger snap or a softer cookie similar to the German Lebkuchen. The cookies are often cut into shapes, particularly gingerbread men. Traditionally it was dunked in port. Select this link to view our Gingerbread Ornaments.
Cowboys.
During the 16th century, the Conquistadors and other Spanish settlers brought their cattle raising traditions as well as their horses and cattle to the Americas, starting with their arrival in what today is Mexico and Florida. The traditions of Spain were transformed by the geographic, environmental and cultural circumstances of New Spain, which later became Mexico and the southwestern United States. In turn, the land and people of the Americas also saw dramatic changes due to Spanish influence. Select this link to view our The Original 4x4.
The arrival of horses was particularly significant. Horses quickly multiplied in America and became crucial to the success of the Spanish and later settlers from other nations. The earliest horses were originally of Andalusian, Barb and Arabian ancestry, but a number of uniquely American horse breeds developed in North and South America through selective breeding and by natural selection of animals that escaped to the wild. The Mustang and other colonial horse breeds are now called "wild," but in reality are feral horses, descendants of domesticated animals. Select this link to view our Cowboy Jiggle Down.
As English speaking traders and settlers moved into the Western United States, English and Spanish traditions, language and culture merged to some degree, with the vaquero tradition providing the foundation of the American cowboy. Before the Mexican American War in 1848, New England merchants who traveled by ship to California encountered both hacendados and vaqueros, trading manufactured goods for the hides and tallow produced from vast cattle ranches. American traders along what later became known as the Santa Fe Trail had similar contacts with vaquero life. Starting with these early encounters, the lifestyle and lingo of the vaquero began a transformation which merged with English cultural traditions and produced what became known in American culture as the "cowboy". Select this link to view our Cowboy Bear.