“Wait – why are you packing those?”
My other half is preparing for our upcoming trip to Costa Rica – and with two suitcases between us and much of the room already taken up by Christmas gifts for her family, space is tight. So – why is she bothering with this big box of Christmas crackers? Can’t she just buy them when we arrive?
The answer is that she can’t – because they’re not a thing in Costa RIca. Despite the country very much following the Western/Northern European model of festivities (Christmas trees, tinsel, artificial snow decorations, Santa and his reindeer) even though the country is enjoying the height of summer – usually upwards of 25 Celsius/77 Fahrenheit from dawn to dusk – well, they don’t have crackers. They’re an exotically foreign novelty. Not in the rest of Central America, either, nor the United States.
That’s why she’s packing them.
This blows my mind. I can’t think of anything more Christmassy than teaming up with someone to pull on one end of what looks like a foil-wrapped cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper, until it explodes and showers one of us with cute but almost completely useless items, plus a scrap of paper containing a joke so bad it makes you wonder if you’re having a waking nightmare. It’s not exactly something I look forward to, but it is reassuringly predictable, a ritual that marks the passing of one year to the next, like that bottle of aftershave or pair of socks you always get from that aunt, or a fridge full of turkey leftovers. It just wouldn’t seem right otherwise.
But the reality is that Christmas crackers follow a particularly geocultural pattern. You’ll probably only find them in countries that were part of the former British Empire, the remnants of which being called the Commonwealth of Nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the like.
As legend has it (and as the Oxford English Dictionary records), the modern version of crackers started with London confectioner Tom Smith in 1847. In an attempt to distinguish his bon-bon sweets, he started wrapping them in a twist of foil and cardboard, accompanied by a love message somewhat along the lines of modern fortune cookies.
At some point – allegedly after hearing the crackle of his open fire – he hit upon the idea of adding the part that goes *bang!* and gives the cracker its name: two tiny strips of cardboard secured in the middle with a chemical-lined band that, when yanked apart, ignited with an audible pop.
It’s unclear when the love poems were replaced by the jokes – and why the jokes had to be so intentionally bad. (Fun fact: as an aspiring copywriter in the early 2000s I applied for a role as Christmas cracker joke writer, and had to submit a sheet of a hundred of my best jokes. Not only did I fail to get the job, I also didn’t sell a single joke to them. It turns out that writing witticisms that unfunny is extremely hard work and probably does things to your sense of wellbeing and goodwill to others that I wouldn’t like to speculate about.)
As for the flimsy, brightly-coloured tissue-paper crown that’s so difficult to open up without tearing to bits – that might (might) hark back to the ancient Romans. The week-long agricultural festival of Saturnalia, that took place in the days running up to what is now Christmas, involved the donning of colourful headgear. But then, who doesn’t like to put on a silly-looking hat at a family get-together? Whatever the reason, they were probably added around the turn of the 20th Century by the sons of Tom Smith who had taken over the business.
Today, that business is still going, located in South Wales in the UK – and every year, it wraps, boxes and despatches more than 70 million crackers a year, including a few for the British Royal Family.
At the other end of the affordability scale, there’s the gold-painted 6-cracker set from London department store Fortnum & Mason. It’s a company that specialises in extremely upmarket hampers of luxury food and wine – and every one of these crackers contains a code that gets you one of those hampers. The price of a set of these crackers? Oh, a mere trifle of a thing: just £5,000 ($9000 CAD) of your hard-earned cash, if you’re up for it. (Yes, I promise this is a real thing.)
Considering the sheer exportability of so many British traditions – and the appearance of Christmas crackers in the Harry Potter films and episodes of Downton Abbey – could crackers someday make an appearance at American Christmases and Thanksgiving celebrations and even further afield?
It’s not outside the realm of possibility – but the biggest issue might be importing them, since many. World airlines currently prohibit them (here’s a list) and no airlines going to America will allow them on board, even in the hold luggage.
Then again – is the rest of the world ready for those jokes? I think perhaps not. Let’s keep them our little secret. It’s the humane thing to do.