Those who still make a habit of the Sunday roast are faced with a challenge come Christmas: how to make sure the big meal doesn’t disappoint. What if the turkey is a let-down given everyone so loves the topside of beef? It would take a real Grinch to sniff at the festive spread – we serve it not because turkey would be anyone’s death row meal but because, as I have written before, there is virtue in tradition for its own sake. And truth be told, there is little reason to fear disappointment when pigs in blankets are close at hand. But there is one other trick up the Christmas dinner host’s sleeve – something that if served at any other occasion of the year would prompt raised eyebrows and being led away gently on suspicion of imbibing too much red wine. It is the best part of Christmas dinner. It is the cracker.
I love a Christmas cracker. For one thing, they act as essential tablescaping; one sight of them and you know this is no ordinary meal. Even without bone china, holly and pine cones, a cracker-laden table looks the part.
They were invented by a Londoner in 1847, as twists of paper to house the bon-bons he sold, and he later added a ‘crackle’ element inspired by the sound of a log on the fire
As a form of organised fun they are quite inspired. The crossing of arms and linking of hands evokes the covenant of holy matrimony. The moment of the crack itself is full of excitement. The jokes provide entertainment, the hats silliness. And the gifts: oh the wonderfully useless, plasticky gifts! I feel real envy eyeing up others’ prizes, even though I’m no more likely to use the dodgy spirit-level my brother has bagged than the miniature nail cutters that I’ve acquired. This year I’ve got everything crossed for a compass.
You may end up with nothing at all. Rules between families differ. Some hold that fairness lies in each person keeping the contents of their own cracker. Others decide that they who end up with the larger end keep the contents. I am fanatically for the latter. There’s no better way of teaching kids that life ain’t fair and shattering our contemporary ‘everyone’s a winner’ derangement.
People don’t realise that they are very much a British thing. Outside of these isles, the realms and a few other parts of the Commonwealth, crackers are almost unheard of. They were invented by a Londoner, Tom Smith, in 1847, as twists of paper to house the bon-bons he sold (a precursor to the traditional sweet-wrapper). Dreaming up new innovations to maintain healthy sales, he decided to insert love messages into the wrappers of the sweets, and then added a ‘crackle’ element inspired by the sound of a log on the fire (which gave the product its onomatopoeic name too). They grew bigger in size and the sweet was eventually replaced by a little trinket. Tom’s son Walter added the paper hats to stay ahead of rival cracker manufacturers that had begun to spring up realising the Smiths were on to a good thing.
I wonder how long they will last. They’ve already been de-glittered and de-plasticked. Last year one of the UK’s largest catering suppliers announced it would offer its customers ‘crackless’ crackers with the non-recyclable silver fulminate strips removed. Instead, an enclosed note would encourage users to ‘make some noise’ as they pull. This was in order ‘to make every Christmas a celebration of responsibility’. Now one of the country’s commercial waste management firms is urging us to abandon crackers altogether to save on paper waste. Wrapping paper has come under similar scrutiny (as one former friend asks: ‘Does the present really need to be a surprise?’). Among all the problems humanity faces, one wouldn’t have thought the Christmas cracker ranked highly, but something so frivolous and fun might not be long for our peculiar world.
If even as committed an environmentalist as the King still believes in crackers, though, there is hope yet. This year his Highgrove estate is selling a handsome box of them featuring bee-saving flower seeds and wooden honey drizzlers, soap bars and garden twine – and a proper explosive ‘snap’.
Meanwhile Harrods of course insists on being as absurd as possible and so has £700 crackers, with six gifts ranging from an Aspinal leather card holder and a Le Creuset corkscrew to Oud room fragrance (of course it does). Count me out. The more expensive the cracker the more pressure there is for the hat to look good and for the gift to be used again after Boxing Day, both of which are guaranteed impossibilities. And besides, personally I don’t want sensible gifts on Christmas afternoon when I’m focused on getting drunk. I’d probably mistake the L’Occitane mini shower gel for brandy butter and try to eat it. The only luxury exception I might make is Hotel Chocolat’s two-foot ‘Rather Large’ cracker. It’s £44.95 but does include 40 chocolates, 12 paper hats, 12 jokes and is likely to involve a mildly entertaining tug of war hopefully ending with someone face-planting into the pudding.
Very British. Cracking good fun. What’s not to love?
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