NUTCRACKER DOLLS NOW A GLOBAL CHRISTMAS FIXTURE

Germany is a leading manufacturer of traditional nutcrackers. Today, the decorative Christmas figures are collected by people all over the world. While they have been around for ages, the wooden dolls only became popular in the US in the 1950s. The nutcracker acquired its iconic status through a globalized transmission of popular culture, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported.

Ever heard of a Räuchermann — or in its diminutive form, the Räuchermännchen? The "smoking man" is a wooden figurine that serves as an incense burner. It's just one of the many traditional Christmas decorations from the Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains, a Saxony border region renowned for folk art in the form of wooden angels, Christmas pyramids and candle arches known as Schwibbogen. But the fact that no one ever came up with a proper English translation for the little smoking man suggests it isn't yet one of the region's famous international exports — unlike its direct cousin, another wooden figure traditionally made in the Ore Mountains: The nutcracker.

The nutcracker gained international recognition thanks to its various cultural representations, and the fact that authors from different countries borrowed from the original tale. International copyright agreements didn't exist when an initial version of the little toy figure's story was written by German Romantic author E. T. A. Hoffmann in 1816, titled The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.

It was adapted by French writer Alexandre Dumas in 1844. The plot of Histoire d'un casse-noisette (simply called the The Nutcraker in English) was nearly identical — but the French version wasn't nearly as dark as the German one. In any case, Dumas' adaptation served as the basis for the 1892 Russian ballet choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, with music composed by Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky. The first complete performance of the ballet only reached England in 1934, and it was staged for the first time in the US during the Christmas of 1944 by the San Francisco Ballet company.

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