Nutcracker noel

HAYDEN — It all started with a gnome.

“Ah, this is the real McCoy,” C.J. Davis said, smiling as she pulled a curious wooden object out of a tote filled with other paper-covered objects.

The vintage, hand-carved, hand-held Bavarian wooden nutcracker had a long beard and a pointed hat. It looked nothing like the nutcrackers that normally come to mind, in soldier attire, accompanied by thick eyebrows and swords at their sides.

"He was probably 50 years old back in the ’50s,” Davis said, examining the piece. "He’s an old guy. But that started the whole thing. A lot of people made gnomes."

This particular gnome was the beginning of a generational legacy for Davis, whose dad found it at an antique store in the Midwest when she was about 5 years old.

"My mother got so mad! She goes, ‘What do you want that thing for?’" Davis said. "Well, this started the collection."

She remembers when her dad, Hal Davis, first began expanding this nutcracker collection from one to many.

"Back then there wasn't internet, so he was buying them through a magazine called 'Antique Trader,'" she recalled. "People would advertise all over the world, and he had a little ad in there. Then a box would come (in the mail), and it would be a nutcracker."

This Christmassy collection has grown to include more than 3,500 pieces from Germany, Italy, America and Australia, with countless years of history and stories connected to each one.

"The oldest piece I know are the ones I have, those nutting stones, and they're about 500 B.C.," she said, grabbing a small stone and hand-sized rock with a convex dip in the surface. "Those are nutting stones. They found them in an archaeological dig in Arkansas. They would find these in digs underneath the trees, where they would sit and crack."

Davis' nutcracker collection is one of the largest in the world, second only to the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum in Washington. She served on the board of the museum for 18 years and was named director emeritus after she retired last year.

“They just remodeled over there,” she said. "It’s really gonna be cool. It’s quite the museum. You’d never believe."

When Davis' dad died in 1989, he passed along his expansive nutcracker collection, which has only grown since then to be like a nutcracker museum in the top level of Davis' house.

A few stretches of the shelves are lined with handheld nutcrackers of different woods and metals, many old and ornate, others featuring symbols or the faces of animals. Davis showed off the curved metal pieces that go over a leg to crack nuts on a knee or thigh while seated.

"They're saying over at the museum, anything that will crack a nut is a nutcracker," she said.

The Knights of the Round Table, the cast of characters from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," famous Americans like President Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Uncle Sam and Thomas Edison, Disney characters, railroad engineers, clowns, monks, royal soldiers and so many more populate the display cases. It takes Davis a few weeks to get the whole space dusted.

While not every origin story and age of each nutcracker is known, they all do tell their own tales.

"It gets really 'noisy' up here. When I'm dusting, they're all chattering, " she said with a smile.

Davis takes various nutcrackers on tours to visit schools or senior centers to share some of the history and craftsmanship of their makers, as well as to share this gift her father passed on to her.

"They love to be seen," she said. "The nutcrackers love to be seen."