Ulbricht Teddy Bear Santa Nutcracker

I have been thinking, lately, about what it means to hold a bear. Not a real one — a small brown plush teddy with a ribbon around its neck, the kind a child might receive on Christmas Eve and keep, wordless, for the rest of their life. This Santa is holding exactly that bear. Right hand. Ribbon bow. A tiny face tucked against his red coat.

He comes from Christian Ulbricht's workshop and the Seiffener Nussknackerhaus, which is a name I love to say out loud because it sounds the way our front parlor smells on the first night of December. The detail that made me stop and look — and I did stop, the first time I saw him — is the dark brown faux-fur band on his cap, not the usual white. Ulbricht made a quiet choice there. It warms the whole figure. And the little bottle-brush tree in his left hand, decorated with small red berries, is the kind of detail that separates a serious Seiffen piece from a tourist shelf. He even comes with a tiny burlap sack, a gingerbread star ornament resting against it.

In the Castle, I keep him on the bookshelf next to my bed. I do not think this is a serious place to keep a nutcracker. Drosselmeyer certainly doesn't — he says it is beneath the dignity of the Seiffener craftsmen to be treated like a bedtime story. But the teddy is so small. And the sack is so full. And sometimes, at night, I'm seven again, and I need to know that someone is bringing things.

— Clara Stahlbaum