“I hope he doesn’t! I hope he gives us something prettier than this - something like a magic toy theatre! Imagine it - with the orchestra playing in it and ballerinas dancing across the scene!” replied his sister dreamily. “Poor little thing, how gullible you are! Uncle Drosselmeier doesn’t do magic!” “Or does he?”, Clara persisted.

Only their uncle Drosselmeier’s presence was missing. “He has hidden it for us, you’ll see!” said Clara, but Fritz wasn’t as convinced “I bet he doesn’t even remember that today is Christmas Eve, he is so strange sometimes.”

The old man was touched by Claras’s gift. He pulled out a small package from his waist coat pocket. “What do I have for little Clara and Fritz? Which one of you wants to open it?”

It was a doll, but not a usual one. It was a soldier and also a nutcracker - his mouth was wide open so that his big jaws could fit a nut in between.

And that was what the family did after dinner. While Clara had some difficulties to press the jaws of the nutcracker together, Fritz was strong enough to crack the nuts, until he tried to break open an extra hard nut. Pressing and squeezing the cracker…

“Why did you do it? ” cried Clara, picked up the tin soldier and his jaw carefully and ran and ran to her mother to tell her what had happened. “My baby, I promise you that when I tell uncle Drosselmeier he will make a new nutcracker as good as the old one by tomorrow morning,” said her mother.

At midnight the clock rang and it woke up Clara. It took her a while to understand where she was, when she saw that she was not in bed. She stood up and couldn’t believe her eyes - Uncle Drosselmeier was sitting on the top of the Christmas tree on the place of the angel. “Uncle Drosselmeier!” shouted Clara, but he didn’t hear her, because he was just a doll.

“Aaaah!” The girl turned around to run away but she hadn’t made two steps and she saw that the whole floor was covered with mice. The mice were all dresses in uniforms like soldiers and they all had rifles. They were led by a terrible creature with seven heads and each head had a golden crown on it. This was the Mouse King.

The clash was great but even more spectacular was the fight between the two leaders. The Nutcracker would have fought over the Mouse King, who was biting the body of the soldier with his seven heads. If only the Nutcracker could catch his necks in his jaws, but he could only jump and kick the Mouse King with his legs.

The toys started cheering and dancing. They celebrated all night and in the morning they all went into the boxes. Clara went to her bed and fell asleep too.

“One Christmas, mice cracked into the palace and ate all the meat, which was meant for the King’s lunch. The King ordered his special inventor, whose name was Drosselmeier too, to create mouse traps and to lay them all over the kitchen.

When the King heard the threat, he ordered that seven cats should guard the princess's bed at night, so that no mice can approach it. But as the cats fell asleep at night, the Queen mouse crept up the princess’s bed and said her spell.

The King ordered Drosselmeier to invent something to turn the old look of the Princess’s face within four weeks. But the poor inventor wasn’t a magician and he had no idea how to deal with the problem. So he went to ask a friend for an advice. “The princess should eat the hardest nut. But it should be opened for her by a boy who has never shaved with his eyes closed. He should then make seven steps backwards without stumbling. Only then will she be cured.” It was a strange advice that his friend gave him but since he had no other choice, Drosselmeier followed it.

Until one day, Drosselmeier’s nephew came to visit his uncle. The fourth week was almost at its end and the old man asked his nephew to try his luck too. The boy hadn’t started shaving yet so he was a good candidate. When he was given the nut he put it between his jaws and pressed them until the nut finally cracked. Then he took the seven steps back.

And although he was the only one who did the task, the Princess refused to marry someone who was so ugly. The King had to agree that such a beautiful girl cannot marry an ugly funny looking boy. Everyone started pointing at Drosselmeier’s nephew and they even didn’t let him go to school any longer for he looked so terrible. The boy never went out again.”

So she went down and took out all the sweets that she could find - but the Mouse King wanted more, so she gave him the Christmas pudding, and a cake and biscuits. The sweets were running out and Clara had no idea what to do, plus she thought of her mother’s reaction on the next day and she started crying. The Nutcracker heard her cry and ran to find her. When he arrived he wait no more. Now that his jaw was fixed, he bit off the Mouse King’s heads one by one.

In the morning when Clara woke up, she hurried to tell her mother what had happened the night before. But after she listened to her story about the fight between the Mouse king and the brave little Nutcracker, her mother said “Clara, stop believing in every dream of yours!” But the girl took out of her pocket seven golden crowns to prove that it was not just her imagination. Yet, her mother didn’t believe her.

She ran to tell him what she was thinking, but she was surprised to see that uncle Drosselmeier wasn’t alone. His nephew was with him. He was no longer ugly but beautiful and with a lovely smile. When Clara had said she would love the Nutcracker she had broken the spell and now her brave guard was standing right in front of her. When their eyes met they knew that one day they would be married and they would live happily ever after.