10 things you didn't know about Christmas crackers:
- What is a Christmas cracker? If you live in the United Kingdom, Ireland, USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand or South Africa, you probably know, but people from elsewhere may not. I recall being in a restaurant in New Zealand close to Christmas, where they had crackers on the table, and a German couple nearby were looking at them as if to say, "WTF is this thing?" A Christmas Cracker is a brightly coloured paper tube, twisted at both ends. There is usually one for each person at a Christmas lunch or party, placed beside the plate. It has a chemical strip inside which makes a small bang when pulled. There are usually a number of items inside. Read on to find out more about those.
- The traditional way to pull them is for each person to take their cracker and cross arms. The person next to them grabs the other end of the cracker until there's a circle around the table, and everyone pulls at once. The record for the biggest number of people pulling crackers together took place in Japan in 2009 with 1,478 people taking part.
- According to tradition, whoever ends up with the largest section of the cracker is the winner and gets the contents, although it's more typical for each person to keep the contents of the cracker by their plate, so everybody is sure to get something.
- Christmas crackers were invented in 1846 by a wedding cake baker called Thomas Smith. He got the idea on a trip to Paris when he discovered bon-bons, sugar almonds wrapped in paper with a twist at either end. He copied the idea, but found they only really sold at Christmas.
- There is usually a joke (the cornier the better) and/or a trivia fact inside. These came about because Smith noticed that men often bought his bon-bons for their sweethearts and so he began including love notes from the early 1850s.
- The "cracker" part wasn't added until about 1860. The story goes that Smith was relaxing by the Fire one night and noticed the cracks and pops coming from the fire, and thought it would be fun to make bon-bons which made a noise when they were pulled in half. Some versions of the story say he experimented himself, suffering several minor burns before getting it right, although his company's records say he bought the recipe for the chemical strips from Brock's Fireworks.
- Smith called his new idea "Bangs of Expectation". They were also nicknamed "cosaques" after the Cossack soldiers who would crack their whips and fire guns into the air. It seems likely that crackers were louder back then than they are today, for at one point, Twelfth Night parties were banned because people pulled a lot of crackers and made too much noise.
- Paper hats didn't make an appearance until after Thomas died, when his sons took over the business. The idea of paper crowns to wear while eating Christmas lunch is thought to have been lifted from the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was celebrated at about the same time of year, and involved wearing decorative hats. It was the sons, too, who evolved the love mottoes into jokes or limericks.
- While crackers are associated with Christmas, they can be made for any celebration using any theme you like. Birthday parties are the other big cracker occasions. Tom Smith's company made crackers with themes like suffragettes, war heroes and Charlie Chaplin. They were also produced for big events like coronations.
- The biggest cracker ever was 63.1m (207ft) long and 4m (13ft) in diameter. It was made by the parents of children at a school in Buckinghamshire in 2001. Another cracker related record was set in 2020. When filming a Christmas episode of QI, comedian Alan Davies pulled 35 crackers in 30 seconds, setting a world record. Because the shows are filmed in advance, the record was actually set in August.
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Willow believes in crystal healing, cosmic ordering and the significance of chance encounters. She believes there's a spiritual explanation for everything. Except she struggles to find a reason why she can turn herself into mist and create a wave of energy which can slam a would-be mugger into a wall. Or why the love of her life left her for a mysterious woman in sunglasses, who then disappeared without trace.
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