The bauble was a jester's mock scepter — a deliberate parody of royal power — before it became the shiny ornament hanging from your Christmas tree.
A showy but worthless trinket or ornament. Historically, the mock scepter carried by a court jester, topped with a carved head.
From Old French baubel, babel (plaything, trinket), possibly of imitative origin suggesting childish babbling and play, or related to Old French beau (beautiful) in a diminutive/pejorative sense Key roots: baubel (Old French: "plaything, trinket").
The court jester's bauble was a short stick topped with a carved head wearing a fool's cap, sometimes with an inflated bladder attached. The jester would use it as a mock scepter, a deliberate parody of royal authority. In Shakespeare's As You Like It, Touchstone's bauble represents the fool's license to speak uncomfortable truths