As the season of advent arrives, nutcrackers like the one pictured above on my sideboard- next to a display of baubles and a redundant home telephone- are being brought down from their barracks in attics, dusted off and stood to attention in time for the festive season.

 

Perhaps due to his slightly crazed eyes or his cheeky raised eyebrow, this particular nutcracker has been at the forefront of Christmas memories for as many years as I can remember as a strange but jolly character, but not much more. This year however, when gazing upon his funky fuzzy hair and diligently trimmed moustache, I wondered how on earth a nutcracker came to be a symbol of Christmas, especially as my mother has warned me- seemingly ever since the Holy Nativity itself- against using the nutcracker to crack nuts.

 

It turns out that the tradition of keeping nutcracker dolls in the house is much more long-standing than I could have thought: the first nutcrackers stood vigil in 1600s Germany as a symbol of good luck and fortune to ward off spirits of evil and trickery, like a mass of modernised and uniformed Thelyphrons.

 

Clearly, there was a demand for good luck in Europe at that time as the nutcracker began to be seen in more and more households in the early 19th century and his uniform of paint became more and more widely seen amongst Baroque fortune-seekers. But it was in 1892 when our nutcracker saw his big break (or big crack).

 

Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece “The Nutcracker”, starring the wooden soldier himself, set on Christmas Eve both shoved the nutcracker into the international spotlight, bringing him attention from America amongst many other nations, and also stamped a permanent seal between the nutcracker and Christmastime.

 

So when you pass a nutcracker this Christmas, raise an eyebrow, toss him a wink and perhaps even break into a pirouette to remind both of you how he became the Yuletide icon that he is.