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do people anywhere else in the world have christmas crackers or are they just a peculiarly British tradition ?

i thought i'd best take you through the whole cracker concept. If you know all this already, just bear with me.

the 'cracker', seen here, usually comes pre-positioned on the Christmas table, allocated on a strictly one per person basis:
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at the appropriate point in the meal, pulling commences. Depending on your local tradition this may happen at the start, end or middle of your meal and may involve a single unilateral pull, or multiple bilateral arrangements.

the unilateral single pull requires arms to be crossed thus pulling to the right with your left hand and vice-versa:
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bilateral pulling is more adhoc. some fancy people can run a couple of bilateral pulls simultaneously:
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pulling the cracker often requires some force. The cracker itself contains a small incendury device which makes a small 'bang' when pulled.

some people choose to grab the inner 'tongue' of the cracker which connects to the cracker bang to ensure a satisfactory explosion. Others simply grab a fist full and pull like mad things:
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After the explosion comes the exploration. participants then search all over the table for the contents of their cracker which will usually consist of four things:
1) a paper hat
2) a naff toy
3) a very bad joke written on a piece of paper
4) a piece of thin cardboard used to hold the cracker shape.

here are my jokes and my present. you can read the joke for yourself (don't laugh too much). the present was a 'poppin eye ball':
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It's obligatory to wear your hat throughout the rest of the meal:
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and for the rest of the afternoon in my case:
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26things

9 Comments

Yanne said:

You don't look very happy to be wearing your hat...

funkypancake said:

that too is a tradition !

JK said:

Have British crackers every year. My mom spent a year in Bournemouth, so she finds them for us to have at our Xmas meal. My parents live in Alabama, so we enjoy the 'cracker' reference.

Maxx Author Profile Page said:

It's because hats usually ruin Dave's hairdo...

michelle said:

they always sell Christmas crackers all over the place here. well, mostly at grocery stores i think. i used to always bug my mom to buy them but she wouldn't. i still have yet to pull my first Christmas cracker. someday though, someday i shall!

Sarah said:

I think they're mainly a British thing. I've never heard of anyone else doing them.

Also, despite the fact that I've heard of crackers before, I didn't know that the paper hats came with them. That explains the paper crowns worn at one point by actors in the movie "About A Boy". I always wondered what that was about.

misslill said:

I am Canadian and I have always loved Christmas Crackers! When I visit friends around the holiday season I bring a box. It is amazing how many different cultures are not familiar with them. I am the Johnny Appleseed of crackers, spreading the word across the nation! Seriously though, once people have tried them they love them! For me it just wouldn't be Christmas without the prerequisite hat, toy and bad joke.

Matts said:

My head is too big for those hats. Having generally had a few glasses of wine before donning mine I nearly always split it and have to wear it as a bracelet instead.

kazza said:

Yep they're big in Australia too :)

http://kazza.id.au/mt-archives/000961.html has the funniest cracker joke I heard all year :)

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