KINGS & SOLDIERS - THE STORY OF THE NUTCRACKER

Christmas is coming and with it the return of the nutcracker. I love seeing the little wooden versions of soldiers and kings come out to remind us of the impending Christmas season. Come to find out though, nutcrackers weren’t originally associated with Christmas.

Nutcrackers first appeared as a Christmas item after being introduced in the short story by ETA Hoffman, called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King in 1816. But they had been being made over 400 years prior by woodcarvers.

Wood carvers produced the first wooden nutcrackers using wood from their locality. When available, boxwood was the preferred wood due to its grain and color to make animals and humans. Examples can be seen at the Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth Washington. There is also a museum in  Neuhausen Germany.

The Nussknacker , as it was called in Germany began being decorated as soldiers and kings as good luck pieces keeping bad spirits away. Wood carvers in Sonneberg the region started the tradition in 1800.

The first soldier-style nutcracker came from a small home in the Ore Mountains area of Germany by the Hendrik Fuchtner family in 1786. That same building is still used today by a fifth-generation descendant, Markus Fuchtner. Would you believe the family kept none of the earlier nutcrackers as heirlooms as they had to sell them to make a living.

In 1865 Wilhelm Fuchtner, the Father of the Nussknacker, began to mass produce his dolls. His inspiration came from Hoffman’s character in the Nutcracker short story. Then, in 1892, the great composer Tchaikovsky set the story to music in the ballet still popular today. As the story is set on Christmas Eve, a wooden nutcracker comes to life as a Prince to become the hero of the tale when he stabs the seven-headed mouse king. From that point on Nutcrackers became synonymous with Christmas.  

Only about 500 Fuchtner nutcrackers are made each year. A Fuchtner king nutcracker named Wilhelm spent almost two years on the International Space Station.

Today, you can order a nutcracker about virtually any celebrity and someone will be only too willing to sell it to you. I found nutcrackers available on Elvis, Abraham Lincoln, the Beatles, Clark Griswold, about every sports team, and Hillary Clinton. Hillary cracks the nuts with her legs, l kid you not.

Surprisingly, you can still buy a Fuchtner nutcracker and they are not that expensive. The most expensive standard sized wooden nutcrackers were in the  $500-$600 range, obviously for the serious collector.

The website Etsy has a Russian candy stripe Santa nutcracker for $1,200 plus shipping. An eBay seller wants $999 for a Merlin the Wizard nutcracker. Another will sell you a Kamala Harris nutcracker for $1,000. The one that stands out as the most absurd price is the “rare mint” Darth Vader and Yoda set that sells for $5,275 plus $143 shipping. However, if you will “settle” for just the “mint” version of the two you will only have to drop $1,595 plus $25 shipping. So there you have it, the difference between “rare mint ” and “mint” is $3,680 plus shipping.

On the other side of that coin, you can buy 10-15 miniature nutcrackers in a set for about $15 on Amazon. I was thinking about buying five pink miniatures for my five granddaughters as all but the baby have danced in the ballet. Then I looked at the faces of the dolls and noticed they have mustaches and beards. No thanks!

We have a few nutcrackers, two of them “guarding” our fireplace. My favorite nutcracker though, other than my granddaughter London, is the Green Bay Packer nutcracker we’ve had for years. Doing research for this article, caused me to have to buy another Packer-Cracker online. My wife has no idea why I possibly need two Green Bay Packer nutcrackers. Can a man possibly have too much Packer stuff?