as a mother of a little girl who also hade that magical Christmas experience, I can't understand why the analysts couldn't figure out that the "Nutcracker" is always put on by the local dance teachers and their students, and that it has become possibly the only time the children who dance it can experience the excitement of the high culture without the narrow doors through which wealthier, "serious" students eventually will present dance recitals to much smaller audiences.

This same time of the growth of the NutCracker saw the demise of the elaborate Catholic and other Christmas pageants that filled the same role for my generation.  Our French parish pageant was known for hundreds of miles as one of the most elaborate and fantastic theatrical events of the season, and the entire parish took pride in its production. We had the Corpus Christi and the Passion Plays, too.

But as the Jєωs and atheists began their attack on our culture from the 1980's on, they drove our church productions into obscurity before they began to attack even the secular Christmas pageants with the death-culture propaganda of halloween and horror.

The flowering of the Nutcracker pageantry fills exactly that time-span between the first open assaults on Catholics and other Christians and the present openly Satanic assaults on all forms of gentle. peace-loving culture.