Christmas crackers aren’t what they used to be

Tweet

Sadly both my parents died in the last few years but as a result I have been going through lots of stuff – in fact it’s still an ongoing process. They both had a tendency to keep everything just in case (and so do I, but I’m trying to be a bit more pragmatic about it!) Anyway one thing I unearthed was a collection of Christmas crackers which must be well over 70 years old. I remember seeing some other similar ones which were already antiques when I was a child. They were made of crepe paper wrapped around cardboard, and decorated with shiny paper shapes or in some cases with rather gruesome little dolls stuck on the outside! I really couldn’t think of any reason why I would need ancient Christmas crackers in future, so decided we might as well use them up. In spite of their age, almost all of them still produced a satisfying ‘crack’ when pulled, with a strong whiff of gunpowder (I think modern crackers are a bit more restrained on this front?) Inside we mainly found the traditional things – a paper hat, a joke and sometimes a small gift – but we thought these were better than their modern equivalents. Some of the jokes were actually funny. The gifts were little things like a tiny whistle, but not all the crackers had them; some had alternatives such as a short general knowledge quiz, a riddle or some sort of word puzzle. But best of all were the paper hats, which were not just the silly tissue paper crowns that all crackers seem to contain these days – these were works of art, and so far we’ve had a policeman’s helmet, a student’s mortarboard (pictured), a bishop’s mitre, and a jester’s hat. In my opinion the little gifts that come out of crackers are just useless plastic tat that gets thrown away. Even the ‘luxury’ gifts are just more expensive useless things – I mean in the past, friends trying to impress have provided crackers which yielded things like a ceramic or wood chopstick rest and a silver place-name holder, which I still have in the drawer – but really, what is the use of just one of any of those? A cunning little quiz is much more fun, can be shared by everyone, and doesn’t produce more plastic waste. And the hats were really great fun! I wonder if this style of cracker could be revived? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2018.