In 1816, the author E.T.A. Hoffman published a story titled The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,

in a volume of children's stories in Germany. The story follows a young girl named Marie,

whose favorite Christmas toy, a Nutcracker doll, comes to life and does battle with an evil

mouse king and then whiskes Marie away to an enchanted world.

It's a pretty dark and gruesome tale.

There were deaths and revenge plots, and Marie herself sustains a pretty serious injury.

Not at all the kind of thing you'd see published as a children's story today.

Almost 30 years later, author Alexander Dumas, the same guy who wrote The Three Musketeers,

would adapt the story.

Marie became Clara, the blood and gore were taken out, and we end up with a more child-friendly

version of the story that most of us would recognize today, one that 50 years later

would become the basis for that most famous and Christmasy ballet, The Nutcracker.

Decorative Nutcrackers, most often resembling a toy soldier, but available in countless other

characters, are synonymous with the Christmas season. But why? That's a story whose origins predate Christmas

itself, and whose history involves a mining town, Napoleon, dance theater, and World War II.

So, let's get Cracken. I'm Brian Earle. This is Christmas Past.

You may have noticed that I've already made a couple of references to nutcrackers with a qualifier.

Nutcracker doll or decorative nutcracker.

Because, you've probably noticed this too, most of those wooden Christmas nutcrackers you're likely to find today are missing something

important, namely an ability to actually crack a nut. Try it yourself, but you're likelyer to crack

the nutcracker itself than you are to crack open a nutshell. They were used to only to crack

nuts up until people started collecting them just for decoration. That's Arlene Wagner.

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