Christmas cracker

 

 

This article is about the holiday item. For the episode of Only Fools and Horses, see Christmas Crackers (Only Fools and Horses). For the animated short, see Christmas Cracker (film).

A common Christmas Cracker.

Christmas crackers or bon-bons are an integral part of Christmas celebrations in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. They are also popular in Ireland. A cracker consists of a cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper, making it resemble an oversized sweet-wrapper. The cracker is pulled by two people, and, much in the manner of a wishbone, the cracker splits unevenly. The split is accompanied by a small bang or snapping sound produced by the effect of friction on a chemically impregnated card strip (similar to that used in a cap gun). One chemical used for the friction strip is silver fulminate, which is highly unstable.

Crackers are typically pulled at the Christmas dinner table or at parties. In one version of the cracker tradition, the person with the larger portion of cracker empties the contents from the tube and keeps them. In another each person will have their own cracker and will keep its contents regardless of whose end they were in. Typically these contents are a coloured paper hat or crown; a small toy, small plastic model or other trinket and a motto, a joke, a riddle or piece of trivia on a small strip of paper.

Assembled crackers are typically sold in boxes of three to twelve. These typically have different designs usually with red, green and gold colors. Making crackers from scratch using the tubes from used toilet rolls and tissue paper is a common Commonwealth activity for children. Kits to make crackers can also be purchased.

Crackers are also a part of New Year celebrations in Russia (where they are called хлопушка - khlopushka) and some countries of the former Soviet Union. Those are however more similar to pyrotechnical devices, normally used outdoors, activated by one person, and produce a stronger bang accompanied by fire and smoke.

History

The Oxford English Dictionary records the use of cracker bonbons and the pulling of crackers from the early 1840s. Tradition tells of how Thomas J. Smith of London invented crackers in 1847. He created the crackers as a development of his bon-bon sweets, which he sold in a twist of paper (the origins of the traditional sweet-wrapper). As sales of bon-bons slumped, Smith began to come up with new promotional ideas. His first tactic was to insert mottos into the wrappers of the sweets (cf. fortune cookies), but this had only limited success.

Smith added the "crackle" element when he heard the crackle of a log he had just put on a fire. The size of the paper wrapper had to be increased to incorporate the banger mechanism, and the sweet itself was eventually dropped, to be replaced by a small gift. The new product was initially marketed as the Cosaque (i.e., Cossack), but the onomatopoeic "cracker" soon became the commonly used name, as rival varieties came on the market. The other elements of the modern cracker, the gifts, paper hats and varied designs, were all introduced by Tom Smith's son, Walter Smith, to differentiate his product from the rival cracker manufacturers which had suddenly sprung up.

The Origins of the Christmas Cracker

The Christmas Cracker was devised in 1847 by an English confectioner and stationery manufacturer, whilst on holiday in Paris with his family. At a time when English sweets were still sold loose from the trays they were made in, his children discovered the Parisian Bon-Bons - coated sugar lollies wrapped in a twist of colored paper - quite a novelty and rather more hygienic he concluded. He liked the idea so much that on his return to England he wrapped his lollies in similar paper and, unwittingly, began the development of his own Bon-Bons.

In the early days, the crackers were called Bon Bons - meaning lollies or candies in French - and as a consequence were still quite small in size with a fairly plain wrapping. Later he added a colored outer wrapper and a friction strip – consisting of two overlapping strips of cardboard coated with a small amount of explosive powder - that is inside all ordinary crackers - and joined together, which became known as a "snap" - because when the cracker is pulled apart the strips rub across each other setting off a chemical reaction that produces an audible bang. The snap was also known as "Silver Fulminante" - a discovery in 1802 by Dottore Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli (1761-1818) Professor of chemistry at Pavia University, Italy.

At the same time - as a confectioner - he would have been familiar with the popular Italian custom of having a surprise "trinket" inside chocolate Easter eggs and also with the ancient Chinese custom of inserting a fortune prediction "motto" inside the fortune cookies.

By putting all these ideas together on his return from the Paris family holiday, the Christmas Cracker was born complete with a surprise novelty gift, a trinket, a tissue paper hat, a snap to make a bang when pulled apart and a piece of paper with a joke or motto - a maxim of appropriate character to express a principle or ideal suited to the occasion.

In those early original crackers, everything was neatly made by hand. Adept cracker makers would assemble the papers, roll, glue and tie off crackers by hand, having put the various novelties etc. into them.

Then they would artistically decorate by hand the outer wrapper with bows and a novelty.

The practice to celebrate Christmas with a decorated Christmas Cracker at each table setting was born and it became a time-honored established tradition passed down continuously from generation to generation of families not only in England but in Great Britain and other parts of the World .

Other manufacturers soon began to imitate Christmas Crackers and by the turn of the century millions of Christmas Crackers were produced annually and with the advent of international distribution the mass production of Christmas Crackers was well on the way.

After more than 150 years, the time-honored tradition of having a Christmas Cracker at each place setting for Christmas still continues.