I bought a bunch of British holiday crackers over Christmas.
What is a cracker?
"Crackers" are decorative party favors
widely used in Great Britain
(since Victorian times)
to celebrate
a variety of special occasions
and festive events.
It's a decorated cardboard tube
that you and a friend can pull on both ends,
and with a loud POP,
the tube breaks open
and a paper crown, a joke and suprise novelty gift
are revealed.
As we enter our 3rd day of being iced in
during the North Texas 2011 Snowmagedon,
my restless 9-year-old son found a box of unused crackers.
And proceded to pop them all.
So, now I'm jumpy, and he has a pile of crap goodies to play with.
A tiny ruler, folded up scissors, a piercing silver whistle, a dolphin keychain
and colored golf tees.
Randomly strange.
And when I tweeted about this,
I accidently called them "poppers" instead of crackers.
And poppers are apparently drugs.
Oops.
Have you ever seen these British Crackers before?
What was your prize?
4 comments:
We always have Christmas crackers and in the English tradition (from my childhood in London) we wear the silly tissue crowns while we eat Christmas dinner.
Ann
We have them at Christmas here in NOrway...I have only seen the tissue paper crowns...yawnnnnn
I spent a couple of years in southwest England and LOVED the Christmas crackers. I too wore the tissue paper crowns for dinner.
We would take the cracker in our right hand and hold it to our left to be taken in the left hand by the person sitting next to us. That would create a circle of crackers to be pulled and we'd all pull at the same time. The prizes were small, like what you posted, but the experience was memorable. Thanks for bringing back the fun memories.
Jason
http://thecheekydaddy.blogspot.com
LOVE crackers! I think Martha had a tutorial on how to make them and fill them with stuff that doesn't suck. Candy would be at the top of my list.
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