Day 10 – Christmas Crackers: The Origin

So I open my advent calender (One is never too old!) and this morning it has a mini chocolate Christmas cracker in it. And it got me thinking; who on earth came up with them? the idea of a paper tube wrapped in pretty paper filled with trinkets, a joke and a funky paper hat, that you pull apart making a loud bang.

Well… It seems that the man who made crackers was actually a sweet maker. He wanted to get more people to buy his sweets and so he put a poem/joke/lymaric inside them (much like a fortune cookie). A little while later he added the bang. He found that they were incredibly popular at Christmas but not really at other time of the year and so he added a paper hat and called it a Christmas cracker. And thus the tradition was born.

But you tell me, when was the last time you had a sweet in a Christmas cracker? Crazy huh?!