Christmas Crackers

Our Christmas traditions play a huge part in making Christmas special. Some may be passed down through the generations, others are so long-standing no one has any idea where they started, but they’re just as important to our celebrations. Christmas trees: we know Christmas greenery has been a tradition around the world for centuries, and Christmas trees are generally credited to Germany. Gonks: they may be long-held tradition in Scandinavian countries, but they’re a relatively new tradition in the UK. Christmas crackers, however, date back to the mid-eighteenth century, and went through a number of refinements until the early 1900s created the style we all know and love. Whether you opt for the group, Auld Lang Syne-style pull, with crossed arms and the end of a cracker in each hand, or the pairing with the person closest to you, the Christmas cracker is as synonymous with Christmas lunch/dinner as the Brussell sprout, particularly in the UK.

    

Confectioner, Tom Smith is credited with the creation of the festive novelty after a trip to Paris in the 1840s. Impressed by the ‘bon bon’ – a sugared almond sweet wrapped in pretty paper twisted at both ends – he started to sell them when he returned to London, and included a small motto within the package. Although they weren’t the success he’d hoped for, many were bought by men for their loved ones, and the mottos became short love poems.

 

Unperturbed, Smith sought to improve upon his idea; there was something missing, and it is claimed he was sat in front of an open fire one evening a couple of years later, and although the cracker shape may well have originated from a newly-added log, the cracking noise emitted is said to have been the inspiration behind the snap we now associate with crackers. Experimenting led him to a fireworks company for the right ingredients to recreate the sound, and the new range was rather crudely named 'Bangs of Expectation'. The new, improved products increased in size, and the sweets were replaced with small gifts or toys; before too long, there was another change, and fortunately, the name changed to ‘Cosaques’, a reference to the cracking of whips of Russian Cossacks; the public, however, started to call them crackers – for obvious reasons – and within a decade, the name had changed again.

  

Whilst the change made a big difference to the perception and sales of crackers, Smith didn’t live long enough to see the incarnation we’re familiar with today. After his death in 1869 at the age of 46, his three sons – Tom, Walter and Henry – continued to grow the business and change the product to the one we see today. The paper hats became part of the act in the late 1800s, and opinions on where the idea for the crowns originated from differ: it’s possible they symbolise the crowns worn by the three wise men or the paper crowns that often adorned Epiphany to celebrate Twelfth Night, but it could also be a nod to the ancient Romans celebrating Saturnalia in December. The credit for introducing the crown is also debated, with Smith’s sons Walter and Henry both being attributed. The mottos were replaced a few years later by the corny jokes we’ve all come to love and hate. Walter would travel the world in search of the perfect cracker gifts, and the business is still going strong today.

   

But the bon bon / bang of expectation / crosaques / cracker wasn’t initially designed to complement Christmas dinner. It was a gift, pure and simple, and as such, designs were created for many occasions. Crackers were available in the early 20th century for bachelors and spinsters, containing thoughtful gifts like false teeth and wedding rings – where are they now?! There were crackers to celebrate coronations and for notable figures – suffragettes, war heroes – and those that followed popular trends in cars and music, along with stars of the day, including Charlie Chaplin. Crackers were even used to bolster morale during the First World War; during the Second World War, though, the cracking strips were used to mimic gunfire when training soldiers, and that, along with the rationing of paper, seriously restricted the manufacture of crackers for a number of years.

    

Look for the history of Christmas crackers, and you’ll find Tom Smith’s name runs throughout, but he isn’t the only contender… Another London confectioner – but one of Italian descent – Gaudente Sparagnapane marketed himself as an ‘oriental confectioner’, but also, ‘the oldest maker of Christmas crackers in the United Kingdom’, and given his company was established a year before Smith’s, he could well be right. He was also the father of suffragette, Maud Sennett, but further information on his history has unfortunately been lost. And then there’s James Hovell, yet another confectioner manufacturing crackers of a similar design around the same time, but like Sparagnapane, there’s little evidence of his work. He did, however, have a cracker factory in Yalding, a stone’s throw away from the Walnut Tree pub.

    

Whilst those days are long behind, crackers remain, and the choice is almost endless. All budgets and ages are catered for, and variations of the standard theme have become more popular: the single, oversized variety, miniature crackers and crackers designed with children in mind. And then there are make-your-own kits that provide you with the motto, hat and snap but allow you to provide your own gift.

 

We may never know the whole truth about the origins of crackers, but we can still enjoy their legacy. We may cringe and moan about the well-worn jokes, but the majority of us will wear our paper crowns as we deliver them with a chuckle, and that’s only after we’ve attempted the small, wire puzzle or checked the half-size pen works, swapped the compact mirror for a miniature padlock and questioned who wants to partake in the charades that often follow the witticisms!

   

As you peruse the vast selection of crackers in almost every store you visit between now and Christmas, be grateful they’re no longer called 'Bangs of Expectation'!