Over the last couple years I have become obsessed with trying to purchase the best Christmas nutcracker decoration and gradually my ornaments have increased in size!
The Christmas nutcracker stems from German folklore they were given as gifts to bring luck to a family and to protect the home.
They were created to represent a symbol of power and strength looking back at how and why the nutcrackers where originally invented this symbolism of ideology begins to make sense.
There are many folktales that tell the story of how the first nutcracker was created one myth recites the story of a German farmer who like many others struggled to open the outer shell of a nut. This inspired him to come up with the idea of challenging his local village to come up with a solution to this problem. It was a local puppet maker who won this challenge by creating the first figurine nutcracker that we have become accustomed to today, a lever-mouthed doll which cracked nut shells open quickly and easily.
This figurine became more popular when Peter Tchaikovsky adapted an 1816 E.T.A Hoffman Christmas story called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King for the famous ballet ‘The Nutcracker. The popularity of this swept through Europe and the demand for the wooden figurine grew into the Christmas decoration that we know today.