A Brief History of How Nutcracker Dolls Became A Christmas Symbol for the Ages

12 | 14 | 2020   

Around the start of December, it’s not unusual to see decorative nutcrackers on store shelves, arranged on mantelpieces, hanging from Christmas trees, and even decorating holiday sweaters. For some, their colorful outfits, hand-painted faces, and tufts of white hair are the very definition of Christmas cheer. But have you ever wondered how these nutcrackers got to be so popular, and why people usually only bring them out at Christmastime? The answer involves German literature, a Russian ballet, and lots of generous American G.I.s.

From Basic to Beautiful

Humans have been using tools to crack nuts for thousands of years.

The earliest designs were merely two pieces of wood joined by leather or a metal hinge, but as the centuries progressed, artisans started to create figurative designs for nutcrackers, such as brass crocodiles in India and cast-iron squirrels in England.

Wood remained a popular material, and by the 18th century, carvers in Switzerland, Austria, and northern Italy were making fanciful wooden nutcrackers that looked like human and animal heads, sometimes with moving lower jaws.

The nutcrackers best known in America today come from Germany. In fact, they often come from a particular region in Germany, the Erzgebirge — a mountain range near the border with the Czech Republic. Erzgebirge is German for “ore mountains,” and for many years the region was home to rich deposits of silver, tin, uranium, and more. Starting around the early 1700s, as some of the deposits ran out, miners began crafting nutcrackers, toys, and glass ornaments as a way of supplementing dwindling mining income.

By around 1800, the earliest versions of the toy nutcracker dolls so familiar to us today started to appear in Erzgebirge workshops. It’s said that the woodcarvers chose figures of authority for these dolls — soldiers, policeman, politicians — because the common people enjoyed putting toy versions of their overseers  “to work” by having them crack the “hard nuts of life.”

Originally, these nutcrackers had no specific association with Christmas, and it’s not clear exactly when such a link began. But the seasonal significance makes some sense when you consider they were created in workshops alongside toys and games that were often given as gifts. Some have also suggested that a link arose because nuts are an important component of German holiday baking.

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