Decorated Christmas Gingerbread

My in-laws are Czech, not Polish. But they do live about an hour from the border, and there’s an enormous amount of international overlap with pastries and cookies in their region. When I first got married and was eager to impress my very sweet mother-in-law, I had the idea of bringing gingerbread for their Christmas cookie platter. Czechs, like Poles, make elaborate plates of tiny Christmas cookies and share and swap among family members. I made what was, to me, an impressive gingerbread: