https://radcenter.org/2022/11/23/the-history-of-nut-crackers/

The Christmas season is a time where the Christmas season and all other holiday celebrations are fully in motion. Are you surprised to know that these German nutscrackers were designed to be appliances for the kitchen, and not ornaments to decorate the Christmas season. Actually, you’d most likely be surprised when you find someone opening a nut using any of these Christmas decorations.

The home isn’t the only place when you’d see ornamental nutscrackers since even department stores and shopping malls are decorated for the holiday season with them. They weren’t used for ornaments for Christmas, or even for decorations during the season of Christmas, until the Nutcracker ballet.

In the beginning, nutcrackers were constructed with metal that resembled a regular pair of pliers. The Nutcracker Museum claims that by the 15th century, woodworkers had begun to create visually pleasing and practical nutcrackers featuring both people and animals. It was only in the middle of the 19th century when Nutcrackers began to mimic the human-like figures that we see everywhere today.

Wilhelm Fuchtner, a German woodcarver was the first to market and manufacture nutcrackers commercially in 1865. The idea was derived from a character in the children’s books: King Nutcracker or Poor Reinhold. And since the ballet takes place on Christmas Eve, with a nutcracker-turned-hero as the protagonist, it led to the item’s rapid association with holiday decor.

36dlo6kwvs.