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Brits go crackers at Christmas
• Special Guide for overseas readers
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By
The Minx
Friday,
15 December, 2006
Christmas crackers are an integral part of British Christmas celebrations. No Christmas meal in the UK, formal or informal, public or private, is considered complete without a ceremonial cracker pulling session by the diners before they sit down to eat.
In UK English to crack means to break or snap with a sharp noise. This is the derivation for the term cracker as used in Christmas cracker (and for a dry biscuit, eaten with cheese, which snaps when broken apart).
A cracker consists of a cardboard tube, around 4 inches in length, placed in the centre of a 10 inch sheet of brightly decorated foil paper, which is then wrapped round it and twisted at each end where it meets the cardboard. This gives an unstiffened section of paper to grip at each end of the cracker, making it resemble an oversized sweet-wrapper.
The central cardboard tube is packed with: a folded coloured tissue paper hat (cut into the shape of a crown), a small gimcrack gift, a corny joke ("What do hedgehogs eat at parties? Prickled onions") and a snap.
The snap is what gives the cracker its name. A snap is a narrow length of cardboard fed through from one end of the cracker to the other and dusted with a whisk of gunpowder in the centre. When two people hold each end of a cracker and pull it apart, this snap explodes with a loud bang or "crack" and throws out the contents. The person left holding the end with the cardboard tube get its contents.
The popular way of exploding crackers is for diners round a table to cross arms and to all pull the ends of each other's crackers simultaneously, detonating them all at once. The hats are then put on, the jokes read out to loud groans and the token gifts scorned and tossed aside. At upmarket parties the crackers may be made of superior materials and contain superior gifts.
It is a running joke that all the jokes and mottos in crackers are unfunny and unmemorable. Similarly, in most standard commercial products, the "gift" is equally awful although wealthier individuals can buy crackers with expensive trinkets. Most Crackers are very cheap and usually made in China.
Assembled crackers are typically sold in boxes of ten or twelve. The wrappers typically have different designs usually with red, green and gold colours or a Christmas motif.
The Origin of Christmas Crackers
Crackers were first invented by Tom Smith, a London confectioner in around 1840, to contain his firm's sweets, and called bon-bons (they are still called this in Australia). Tom Smith's, who are still in business today, offer a range of crackers including luxury ranges. Their website, www.absolutelycrackers.com can be found at our link. You can read more about the history of crackers there. (US residents can also place orders on this site). .
On the Lam 2006
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