The Nutcracker describes a traditional Christmas Eve family celebration with German sounding character names. Clara receives a nutcracker as a gift but her brother wants it and ends up breaking it. Everyone goes to bed and then the magic really begins in the form of Clara's dreams about the nutcracker, evil mice, fairies and wonderful sugar treats.
If parts of the ballet (especially the music) seem familiar to you, Walt Disney used some of it in his revolutionary movie Fantasia.
