Nutcracker

Is it just me or do you find a nutcracker creepy?  I am referring to those evil looking wooden soldiers that seem to haunt a perfectly good Christmas as they somehow find their way to being a staple during the Yuletide season. I was told they are meant to look scary, to ward off evil spirits. Those huge teeth and angry eyes .....shudder!! My former Danish neighbours used to display a waist-high nutcracker next to their christmas tree every year and it scared the crap out of my boys when they were little. We could see it from our window.  It looked really creepy at night when the lights were out and you could still see those ginormous white teeth under the blinking christmas lights. Eeeek!

Why are they called nutcrackers and do they actually crack nuts? I googled for information and here's what I learned from Dawn @ Dawn's Scary Thoughts.

"Well, they do crack nuts and apparently nut crackers have been around since at least the Greeks and Aristotle, at least in a decorative/functional form. England’s King Henry VIII gave second wife Anne Boleyn a decorative wooden nutcracker as a gift in the 1500s. But, the colorful nutcrackers we now associate with Christmas didn’t exist until the 18th century, and were the product of German craftsmen.

In Germany, nutcrackers weren’t just practical tools, they were totems said to protect families from danger. Their big wooden teeth were designed to scare away evil spirits, and their ability to crack nuts symbolized the circle of life: A tree drops a seed (nut), which becomes a tree and from the tree the wooden nutcracker is born. The nutcracker, by design, also was a form of satirical political commentary. Nutcrackers made in the image of high-ranking officials, kings and soldiers were a way to force high-status men to “serve” the people. For example, Napoleon may have won battles in Germany, but he was helpless in the hands of the German people, who made the little general’s likeness the most popular nutcracker design of its time.

In the 19th century, nutcrackers began being sold as children’s toys for Christmas. The most popular designs during this time were harlequins and soldiers. One of these soldier nutcrackers became the protagonist of E.T.A. Hoffman’s novel The Nutcracker and the King of Mice , which subsequently inspired Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suit e and The Nutcracker ballet. In America, the nutcracker as a collector’s item first gained popularity in the 1950s, when American GIs returning from Germany brought the colorful nutcrackers home with them. During the same period, The Nutcracker ballet’s popular success also sparked interest in the colorful wooden toy."

My cookified version of a nutcracker.

Nutcracker Cookies

And oh, my nutcrackers were featured on Sunday's Best Link-up #49 and Wake Up Wednesday Linky Party #97 !