‘Poor papa in straight panic mode’: Ginger bread house construction hits several snags and ruins a little girl’s architecture dreams for good

With the festive period well and truly over for another year, one little girl’s big feelings about a little house are the perfect microcosm of Christmas and New Year, all wrapped up in an 11-second TikTok video.

The festive period has seen all sorts of Christmas scenes, such as one dad who went far too far with his Elf on a Shelf or Chicago’s Christmas train, but this sweet video is much more personal. The clip, posted to TikTok by TikTok user @kassidy_rae, shows the little girl and her grandpa trying and failing to build a gingerbread house.

We’ve all been there: when a supposedly simple task is anything and then there’s tears and torn out hair — and that’s not even counting the kids! Unfortunately, little kids have big feeling and when something doesn’t quite work out, it’s basically the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone ever. One mom found this out in the most embarrassing way as her daughter “ruined” a Christmas pageant!

In the gingerbread house video, when the roof fails to stick onto the structure properly, the little girl stars to cry. Her grandpa jumps right in to explain they can fix it, only to make the entire structure fall down instead! What follows is an almost cinematic silence followed by a wail of mythological proportions as the girl’s dreams of gingerbread architecture literally come crashing down.

According to the video’s caption, the little girl had been dreaming about making a gingerbread house with her papa for weeks, which at her age, is basically a lifelong dream! When the house comes crashing down into a gingerbread wreck instead, she is not happy. For it to go so badly is definitely a crushing blow, but time is a great healer and she’ll no doubt look back at this video and laugh in years to come.

Many commenters on the TikTok video felt the same way, leaving comments like how the video “someday will become a treasured memory shared with dad,” while others said they “felt bad” for laughing, with one user commenting “I feel like an absolute monster laughing at this sweet angel’s misfortune but her comedic timing omg.”

While many of the comments on the video were about the little girl and her well-timed and frankly, hilarious reaction to the gingerbread house’s collapse, other users zeroed in on the grandpa in the video, joking about his panicked response to the destruction: “Poor Papa in straight panic mode,” said one user, while another joked, “he looks like he cant believe it just happened either.”

This little exchange will no doubt go on to be a treasured Christmas memory full of Christmas nostalgia, and could even spawn a new family Christmas tradition. If it does, many TikTok users offered helpful ways to prevent a repeat of last year’s gingerbread catastrophe. One user offered a live-saving tip, stating, “we have been using hot glue for 20 years it’s a lifesaver,” while others recommended buying an already assembled gingerbread house to decorate. Whatever the girl and her grandpa choose to do, here’s hoping it goes a lot better than this year’s Christmas disaster!