Hearing just the first few notes of this song, you're transported to a world of opulent spectacle, a fancy holiday party, a Christmas tree that magically grows to dizzying heights,

a mouse king and a life-sized nutcracker who comes to life. Sugarplum fairies and dancing snowflakes

in a land of sweets and exotic dances from exotic characters from all over the world.

The unmistakable music and imagery of the Nutcracker

is as much a part of our Christmas landscape as Santa Claus himself. And attending a live

performance of the ballet is a cherished annual tradition for families all across the country.

Whether you live in a large city or a small town, there's probably at least one

production of the Nutcracker near you. But of course, it wasn't always that way. The vast

majority of the Christmas traditions we observe today in America got their start somewhere else,

usually England and Europe. The Nutcracker too got its start somewhere else, Russia in this case,

but the interesting part is that it didn't become a Christmas tradition until it reached America.

And as far as Christmas traditions go, this is one of the newest ones we have.

We're talking very new here.

And it's all the result of a chain reaction starting with the formation

of the Soviet Union, changing cultural tastes in America, and a little help along the way

from Walt Disney. I'm Brian Earle. This is Christmas Past.

Our story begins at the Imperial Mariansky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. It's 1892, and we're

right in Russia's golden age of classical ballet. Composer Peter Chikovsky had already written the

scores for Sleeping Beauty in Swan Lake. So the director of the Imperial theaters commissioned him to write

a new score. It would be for a ballet based on the story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,

written by the German author E.T.A. Hoffman in 1816. It was revised and translated into French

by Alexander Dumas in 1844. That's the same Alexander Dumas who wrote The Three Musketeers

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