Cracker-pulling. This is a very famous Christmas tradition in Great Britain. But where does it come from? Why do Brits pull a Christmas cracker at Christmas? Do you want to know? Well then keep on listening!

Hi and Welcome to the advent edition of my podcast. If you want to read the transcript of this episode, click the link in the description!

Today, we will answer the question: Why do Brits pull a Christmas cracker at Christmas? so let’s get into it!

Some of you might be confused about what even is a Christmas cracker since we don’t have it here in the Czech Republic. All right, don’t worry, I got your back. When someone says „I got your back“ it means that they support you or that they are ready TO help you.

I will put a picture in the description of the episode, so you can quickly look there, but in a nutshell, Christmas Cracker is a cardboard paper tube, wrapped in Christmas paper and twisted at both ends. It looks a little like a big bonbon. There is a banger inside the cracker. A banger is made of chemical paper that reacts with friction so that when the cracker is pulled apart by two people, the cracker makes a bang.

Each person takes the end of the cracker and pulls. Or if there are people around the table, everyone crosses their arms to pull all the crackers at once. All people hold their own cracker in their right hand and pull their neighbor’s cracker with their left hand.

Inside the cracker, there is a paper crown made from tissue paper that you put on your head, a motto or joke on a slip of paper and a little gift. It is a long-running joke that the mottos in crackers are not even funny, and very often everyone knows them, as the same jokes have been appearing in crackers for years and years!

Christmas crackers are a British tradition dating back to Victorian times when in the early 1850s, London confectioner (a person that makes or sells sweets or chocolate) Tom Smith started adding a motto to his sugared almond bon-bons which he sold wrapped in twisted paper packages. As many of his bon-bons were bought by men to give to women, many of the mottos were simple love poems.

He was inspired to add the „bang“ when he heard the sound of wood that he had just put into the fire. He decided to make a log-shaped package that would produce a surprise bang and inside would be an almond and a motto. Soon the sugared almond was replaced with a small gift. Since then, it has become a tradition and it is practiced all over the UK until today.

And now you know.

Source:

„Christmas Crackers.“ Historic UK, www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Christmas-Crackers/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.