The pigs with 2025 on them are date tags for the gingerbread houses. This way, we can keep track of them and eat them before they spoil. But gingerbread piglets are also associated with Christmas and New Year through the concept of Glückschwein (Google that to your heart’s content, there was a short discussion about it under the 2023 posts ).

My grandmother was Sudetendeutsch, and the cookie-cutting forms my mom inherited from her are in high probability of German origin. And although my mother is not consciously superstitious or religious, some things she learned as a kid are in the bone – and one of those things is making ornamental pigs, sometimes even adorned with shamrocks, for good luck on Christmas and New Year.