“My father carried one home from Germany in his duffel bag in 1946. I’ve turned one every winter since.” Why a 75-year-old woodturner in Minnesota is selling his last nutcrackers, cut from his father’s pines, at a special price

In the spring of 1947 Walter Lindemann planted a row of red pines along the north edge of his farm outside New Ulm, Minnesota, to keep the snow off the yard. On the mantel inside stood the painted wooden soldier he had brought back from the war. Seventy-seven years later a summer storm laid the whole row flat. The trunks have dried in the machine shed for two years, and this winter his son Norbert is turning the last of them into nutcrackers. When this wood is gone, he is done.

New Ulm, late October. The shop is a lean-to off the garage, twelve feet by sixteen, with a wood stove in the corner and a lathe older than most of the people who will read this. It smells like pine shavings and coffee that has been on the burner since six. Above the bench hangs a black-and-white photograph of a young soldier in an Army overcoat, and on the shelf beside it stands a painted nutcracker with a hairline crack running straight down through its head.

“My dad traded two cartons of cigarettes for that soldier in a village outside Würzburg,” Norbert says. “It rode home in his duffel bag and stood on our mantel every Christmas I can remember.” In December 1976 it got knocked off the mantel and split. Norbert was twenty-five, a machinist at the grain-dryer plant in town. He glued the old one back together, then went out to the shop and turned his father a new one.

“I made a mess of the first three,” he says. “The fourth one my dad put on the mantel next to the old one. He never said a word about it, which from him was a big compliment.” Norbert has turned at least one every winter since. Fifty years of them now, for his own mantel, for neighbors, for the church Christmas bazaar, and for anyone who asked.

Two things wrong with a store-bought nutcracker

“Pick one up in the store and turn it over,” he says. “If it’s heavy and cold and there’s a seam down the side, it was never wood. And if the candle cup is a little dimple on top, that candle is going to lean.”

The first is that most of them aren’t turned at all. The ones stacked by the hundreds in the big stores are poured into a mold out of resin, or glued together from thin parts, then spray-painted on a line. They look fine on the shelf. A year or two on the mantel and the paint chips at the nose and the crown, and you can see the white plastic underneath.

The second is the candle. A nutcracker that’s supposed to hold a taper has to hold it straight, because a candle that leans drips wax down the front of a soldier’s coat, and onto your tablecloth. On a lot of the cheap ones the hole is barely deep enough to stand a birthday candle in. Norbert bores the hat on his painted soldiers to take a standard 7/8-inch taper, and his natural pine ones hold their candle in a brass cup.

He throws out about one head in six. Pine has knots and pitch pockets, and when one opens up on the lathe, that head goes in the stove. “I’d rather burn it than send it to somebody,” he says.

Why a broken resin nutcracker can’t be fixed

Every December somebody comes to his table at the church bazaar with a shoebox. Inside is a nutcracker in pieces, never one of his. It’s a soldier from a department store, or one that came free with a holiday catalog, or a big one from a warehouse club that tipped over when the cat went after the tree. He keeps a crate under the bench of the ones he had to hand back: a king with his arm snapped off at a glued joint, a drummer whose face peeled off in one flake, a soldier that cracked straight across the middle like a dinner plate.

He can tell you what each one is made of before he gets the lid off. What he can’t do is fix them. “Resin doesn’t glue, it just breaks again somewhere else,” he says. “And there’s no wood under that paint to sand back to. When it’s broken, it’s broken.”

Most of the people with the shoebox go home with one of his instead. Solid pine, turned on his lathe, painted or stained by hand. If it ever does get knocked off the mantel, it’s wood, and wood can be glued, the same way he fixed his father’s in 1976.

Where the nutcracker on your mantel came from

The nutcracker soldier everybody knows, the tall hat, the big jaw, the beard, the stiff little coat, was first turned on a lathe around 1870 by a woodturner named Wilhelm Füchtner in Seiffen, a village in Germany’s Ore Mountains. Whole villages there lived off turning wooden toys through the long winters.

For most of the next century almost nobody in America had one. That changed after the war, when soldiers like Walter Lindemann came home with them in their bags.

Most of the ones that came over were painted soldiers and kings, turned from soft local wood by families who had done it for generations. Norbert still turns his the same basic way: head, body, legs and hat as separate pieces, each one turned round from a block of pine and fitted together.

What makes Norbert’s nutcrackers different

• Turned and carved, not cast: Head, body, legs and hat are each turned from solid pine on the lathe, then the crown points, the jaw and the joints are carved by hand with a knife and gouge before everything is fitted together. No resin, no mold, no seam down the side.
• From his father’s windbreak: Red pine, Minnesota’s state tree, from the row Walter Lindemann planted in 1947 and a storm brought down in 2024. No tree was cut down to make them.
• Two honest sizes: The painted soldier stands 10 inches (25.5 cm), about as tall as a dinner plate is wide. The natural pine king stands 15 inches (38 cm), a little taller than a wine bottle.
• Made to hold a real candle: The painted soldier carries a standard 7/8-inch taper in his hat, the natural one holds it in a brass cup in his hand. Candle not included. As with any candle, never leave it burning unattended.
• Finished by hand: The soldier is painted red, green, black and gold the way the 1946 one was, with a soft white beard. The natural one is stained a deep walnut brown so the pine grain shows through.
• No two alike: Every piece comes out of a different stretch of a different trunk, so the grain, the knots and the brush strokes are never the same twice.

Two nutcrackers, one pair of hands

Norbert turns two kinds, and he’ll tell you straight which one he likes better. The painted soldier is the one his father carried home: red coat, green trousers, black boots, a gold crown with little red jewels, and a JOY sign in his hand. “That’s the one the grandkids pick,” he says. The natural pine king is his own: the same turning, no paint, just a dark walnut stain so you can see the grain, and a brass cup for the candle in his hand. “That one’s for people who like to see what it’s made of. That’s me.”

What his customers say

• ★★★★★

  “I bought the painted one for my mother, who has had the same chipped store nutcracker since 1990. She picked it up, felt how light it was and said ‘Oh, this is wood.’ It was on her mantel with a candle in it by that evening. The chipped one went to the garage.”

  – Darla K., 61, Sioux Falls, SD
• ★★★★★

  “I got the natural pine one because I don’t care for a lot of paint. You can see the grain right through the stain. It doesn’t come with a candle, which they tell you up front, but a regular taper from the drugstore drops right into the brass cup and stands dead straight.”

  – Russell T., 68, Eau Claire, WI
• ★★★★★

  “Our old resin one broke in three pieces when the tree came down on it. I tried two kinds of glue. This one is the real thing, heavier in the base and lighter everywhere else, and the grandkids are allowed to touch it.”

  – LaDonna P., 64, Dubuque, IA

One man, one lathe

Norbert is 75 and he works alone. There’s one lathe in the shop and one stool in front of it. His son farms soybeans near Sleepy Eye and has no patience for it, and his daughter moved to Denver. “It takes about ten winters before you can turn a head without thinking about it,” he says. “Nobody has ten winters to give to a nutcracker anymore.”

A good week is what one man can turn, fit, paint or stain by himself, minus the heads that crack and go in the stove. That’s the whole supply. There’s no factory and no second batch, and there is no more of his father’s pine coming. When the last trunk in the machine shed is used up, Norbert says, the lathe gets a cover over it.

His granddaughter Kenzie (27), who works at a bank in Mankato, set up the little shop online for him over a weekend in October. “I don’t know the first thing about any of that,” Norbert says. “She said there were people in Texas and Oregon who would want one and would never set foot in New Ulm. I said fine, as long as I don’t have to talk to the computer.”

Where can you buy Norbert’s nutcrackers?

The nutcrackers are sold only through Cedar & Tin, where Kenzie looks after his orders. Not on Amazon, not in a store, not at the big Christmas markets. Most of them go out as presents, and Kenzie says more than half ship to somebody other than the person who paid. Each one leaves New Ulm wrapped in tissue, ready to give.

One word of warning: a resin nutcracker and a turned wooden one look almost the same in a listing photo. The difference shows the minute you pick one up.

Put it on the mantel, light a candle in it on Christmas Eve, keep it out until January. If it isn’t right, the size, the style or no reason at all, send it back within 90 days for your money back. No restocking fee, no questions. If you want it there before Christmas, order by December 15.