Steubenville has spent a number of years marketing itself as the City of Murals, the Birthplace of Dean Martin, the Gateway to the West, and the Burb of the Burg. But now, as you enter the city from SR7, signs welcome you to the home of the Nutcracker Village. So, why nutcrackers? Where did that concept even come from? As one might expect, I get this question all too often, so we’re going to start at the beginning of the story.

In early spring of 2015, I found myself sitting in the conference room at the Fort Steuben Visitor’s Center, attentively taking notes (doodling) on the conversation going on around me. I must have expressed interest at some point or maybe dad just thought I needed more work to keep me out of trouble, but somehow or other I was the newest (and youngest) member of the Steubenville Christmas Parade committee, despite the fact that I hadn’t even attended parades for several years. I had been on events committees before, and the goal was always to help revitalize Steubenville through celebrating our history and assets and generally having a good time. As is the way with meetings, the attendees talked about the ups and downs of the event, it’s successes, improvements, changes, etc. If I remember correctly, low attendance, lame participants, and subpar floats were among the problems cited. How could we make our parade unique and worth attending? Wheeling and Weirton had already switched their Christmas Parades to be at night, focusing on elaborate lit floats which drew large crowds every year. Our discussion turned towards introducing a theme for the Christmas celebration in Steubenville. Jerry Barilla brought up the Dicken’s Victorian Village in Cambridge, OH and shared the successes of their themed Christmas. He suggested we do a nutcracker theme in Steubenville. His recommendation was to build a collection of hundreds of small nutcrackers that would be used to decorate empty storefronts in downtown and parade participants would be asked to decorate their floats accordingly. I’m not always sure where dad gets his ideas, but somewhere in the midst of conversation, he suggested that our company, Nelson Fine Art & Gifts, could build a few lifesize nutcrackers as a fun addition to this Christmas theme.

As we sat at family dinner that night, dad shared the abridged version of the Christmas Parade meeting. He regularly uses the opening line, “you heard it here first…” to introduce “great ideas”, and we all groan and wonder what sort of atrocious contraption or mechanical ingenuity he’s come up with. This time, it was a nutcracker - a 6’ tall nutcracker, to be exact. Dad even had a scaled paper print of this marvel for show and tell. He hung the picture in our living room for the next few days to observe the interactions of my little siblings with the giant nutcracker while he allowed his own design process ideas to incubate. My youngest sisters loved the nutcracker - they would talk to him, bring other nutcrackers to compare with him, and stand beside him to measure their height. These reactions solidified dad’s belief that 6’ nutcrackers were a great idea, and he tasked me with drawing a digital mock-up.

Original nutcracker design by Mark Nelson:

Traditionally, nutcrackers were made of wood and turned on lathes. We wanted to keep the customs of German nutcracker makers, but knew it wasn’t very economical to use wood for temporary outdoor statues that were meant to survive extreme winter weather. Instead, we used a conglomeration of German traditions, foam, Hollywood movie set techniques, PVC pipe, liquid plastic, spray paint, and our own experience with carpentry to build the first nutcracker. In early June, we surprised Jerry Barilla with Junior, the first Steubenville Nutcracker.

At an August committee meeting, dad told everyone that we would be able to produce between ten and twenty lifesize nutcrackers for the Christmas season. We set dates for the Christmas Parade, nutcracker display, and began making plans for the first Advent Market. Shortly after, our entire company went into full production mode for the 2015 Papal Visit and the nutcracker project was put on hold. Then I decided to leave the country and visit Japan until mid-October. The nutcracker project was further put on hold. I’ve since decided that procrastination breeds success.

On November 4th, our company was set to host the Steubenville Revitalization Group “What’s Up Downtown” event. Up til this point, the nutcrackers had been mostly kept under wraps, considering we had no idea how the project would be taken by the community - after all, who cares about giant nutcrackers? That night, we unveiled the project, giving community members the option to sponsor a nutcracker for the Fort Steuben Park display, purchase for their own stores, or buy blank and paint themselves. Previously, the Fort Steuben Visitor’s Center had asked for two Revolutionary Soldier nutcrackers and the Downtown Bakery wanted a baker nutcracker, but otherwise designs had been left to us. We created a list of over one hundred different design ideas, ranging from traditional and historic figures to fictional characters and entire families of nutcrackers. Over the course of the evening, we designed and sponsored out thirty-seven different nutcrackers, all of which were set to be on display at the Fort. I’ve never had so much fun using children’s coloring pages for work purposes:

The next month was a steady stream of spray paint and styrofoam, as our master carver Brodie Stutzman scrambled to create the army of nutcrackers for my team of artists to bring to life.

Our initial plan to have a few traditional nutcrackers for photo-ops had blossomed into a magical display of soldiers, kings, doctors and scientists. A business trip took most of our family out of town for the entire week before Thanksgiving, once again putting the nutcracker project on hold. This meant Thanksgiving weekend was crunch time for us, since we only had five days remaining until opening night. Being the procrastinators that they are, my dad and brothers designed and built the chalets for the Advent Market on Black Friday. They also poured and assembled all of the concrete bases for the nutcrackers. Most of the nutcrackers were still missing hair and beards come Sunday. Monday, December 7th, all of the chalets were assembled at the Fort Steuben Park and a rudimentary lighting system was rigged up to illuminate the nutcrackers at night. As we hurriedly slapped spray paint on the last few nutcrackers that night, we wondered what the outcome of all our efforts would be. Would anyone show up to see the nutcrackers? Would the Nelson family become the laughing stock of the Steubenville community and bring Fort Steuben Visitor's Center down with them? Tune in next week for The Nutcracker Story: Part 2!