Tis the season for shopping... good will... and the Nutcracker ballet. Here in Minnesota, dozens of groups, all over the state, will perform the Nutcracker this holiday season. Some will be traditional.... like the annual performance by Minnesota Ballet which opens in mid-December. Others, like the Ballet of the Dolls' "Nutcracker Not So Suite," take an unconventional approach. Jennifer Fisher is a professor of dance history at Pomona College and the University of California, Irvine. She's out with a new book called "Nutcracker Nation: how a Russian ballet became a Christian Ritual in the New World." Fisher says the Nutcracker... which is one of the big Tchaikovsky ballets... premiered at the end of the 19th century in Russia... and was a good candidate to become popular in the United States.