There are certain things that are essential to any Christmas – an (ugly?) Christmas jumper, days and days of Christmas TV and the existential dread of being visited by three ghosts.
There is another item that no Christmas table is complete without, but we don’t give too much thought to – the Christmas cracker.
Though some are worried about the plastic waste from crackers, they remain popular.
Just who came up with the Christmas Cracker and when did they start adding jokes and gifts inside?
Who invented the Christmas Cracker?
Popular theories give the credit to London confectioner Tom Smith.
In 1847 he is said to have introduced England to the delights of the French bonbon, a sugar-almond wrapped in paper with a twist at both ends.
To innovate (ie boost sales and put his own mark on an already-established thing), Smith started to add a ‘love motto’ to the sweets – the original template to what is now a collection of awful, awful jokes.
He then played around, enlarging the packaging, replacing the bonbon with a gift and, in 1860, adding the exploding crack using silver fulminate snaps that was to give the cracker its name.
It’s thought he was inspired to add the crackling and popping noises after being inspired by the sounds of a crackling log fire.
After he passed away, his sons took over the business and it was actually son Walter who added the paper hat.
Walter Smith, an integral part of everyone’s Christmas.
Together, the three sons continued to develop the crackers, commissioning a range of themed ones that weren’t exclusive to Christmas.
There were ones for single men and women, where the gifts included false teeth and wedding rings, as well as crackers for Suffragettes and special occasions like Coronations.
However, there’s a claim that Italian-born Gaudente Sparagnapane was the first to sell crackers in the UK. His company, established in 1846, one year before Smith’s describe themselves as ‘the oldest makers of Christmas Crackers in the United Kingdom.’
Cheese Christmas crackers and Prosecco Christmas crackers prove that, whoever came up with it first, the cracker has come a long, long way.
When did we start calling them ‘Christmas Crackers?’
Before they became known as crackers, both companies called their inventions ‘Cosaques’ – named after the soldiers who would fire guns into the air.
It’s not noted when Cosaques became crackers, but Christmas Cosaques doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
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