Gingerbread houses didn’t start with the Brothers Grimm.

They date back to the 1600s, a few centuries after the emergence of gingerbread itself, writes food historian Tori Avey. The tale of Hansel and Gretel may be even older than that, some historians say, perhaps dating to a 14th century famine in which parents turned children out to fend for themselves. By the time folklorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm composed and published a version of the tale in the early 19th century, gingerbread houses were a long-standing tradition.
Somewhere along the way, possibly because of historical connections between gingerbread and religious ceremonies or guilds, gingerbread—and gingerbread houses—had become associated with Christmas.
 The Grimms’s widely read stories helped to popularize gingerbread houses, leaving many with the belief that gingerbread houses started with the Grimms’s version of the tale.
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