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In polite circles, the cheese course is served towards the end of a meal, with the inclusion of crackers optional. Here in the Hatchery, we know little about politeness; and for yours truly at least, cheese is a food group all by itself. Nothing special—mousetrap cheese usually does the job.

But even in the politest households in many countries, there’s one day when the cheese is served first, and crackers are mandatory. Neither is edible though, and much of the cheese is barely palatable.

In case you haven’t caught on, the items under discussion are the Christmas cracker and the awful jokes therein.

For those who are blissfully unaware of this tradition or ritual, prepare to be underwhelmed.

A Christmas cracker is basically a toilet paper tube trapped in a shiny, decorative paper tube approximately 30cm long and 3cm in diameter. The paper tube is twisted and tied off at either end of the TP tube. Inside, one will find a crown made of tissue paper, a toy or trinket, a piece of paper containing a motto, joke, or other bon mot, and most importantly, a “snap”.

Christmas Crackers

A snap comprises two thin cardboard strips, overlapping in the centre and fixed together with paper tape. Inside the overlapping portion is some silver fulminate, which can be induced to make a pop or snap when you pull on the two ends of the cardboard strip.

Tom Smith is the name of the person we all need to “thank” for this ritual—sorry; tradition—he started making crackers or “bon-bons” in a small factory not a million miles from my former home in East London. He invented them in the early 1840s. What a shame it wasn’t a couple of hundred years earlier—perhaps the Great Fire of London might have eradicated all trace of these yuletide gems.

Christmas crackers are on a par with Happy Meals for disposability.

The cracker itself sits on the table until it’s pulled (by two people), at which point its contents are retrieved, leaving the TP tube, shiny paper, and snap to be cleared away by the servers and tossed in the garbage.

In less formal settings, for “cleared away by the servers and tossed in the garbage” read either “left somewhere on the table” or “dropped on the floor”.

The toy or trinket is mostly cheap plastic crap (unless you paid a lot for your crackers, in which case it’s mostly expensive plastic and/or metal crap), which gets played with once or worn for half a minute and then consigned to share the same fate as its former container.

The paper crown is, as previously mentioned, made from tissue paper. We’re not talking about super strong three-ply toilet tissue paper that a cute puppy can trail right round the house without tearing it, nor are we talking about the extra strong paper handkerchief that can contain a several megaton blast from a man-sized nose blowing. No, these paper crowns are made from gossamer-thin, single-ply coloured tissue paper.

And it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to deduce that these crowns are a “one size fits all” deal.

Or to be more accurate, “one size fits many”. My fellow pupils (I won’t dignify them with the term “school friends”) regularly called me a bighead, and in the physical sense, they were right. At 7 3/8, it’s the kind of head that many ball cap manufacturers ignore and almost all budget-conscious cowboy hat purveyors choose not to cater to. Both my kids are similarly “blessed”.

The point of all this discussion about cranial dimensions is that the paper crowns in Christmas crackers are usually too sodding small to fit. I’ll probably have the same problem with my halo if that’s the direction I’m headed in when I curl up my tootsies.

So what does that leave?

Ah yes—in this article at least, I’ve saved the cheese until last.

Having celebrated 61 Christmases so far, I can claim to have a fair bit of experience with Christmas crackers. For approximately fifty-nine of those Christmases, I’ve pulled “budget” crackers, but for a couple of years a while ago, we splashed out on expensive ones. The snaps are more reliable on the latter, and the toys and trinkets are of the expensive plastic and/or metal crap variety, but the one thing that money doesn’t buy is a better class of joke or motto. It’s testament to the appalling quality of the gags that I didn’t keep any: nor do I remember any of the jokes—all I do remember is that the fromage factor was on a par with the jokes from the crackers’ cheaper cousins.

Here’s a sampling from Christmas 2016; the crackers were “south of mid-priced”.

Q. What’s yellow and white and goes along a railway track at a hundred kilometres per hour?
A. A train driver’s egg sandwich.

It’s no funnier in French, although “et se jette” sounds much more exciting than “and goes”.

How about this delightful culinary joke? (What’s the French for “double entendre”?)

Q. Daffy Duck et Donald Duck se bagarrent. Qu’est-ce que ça fait?
A. Un conflit de canard.

What little it had, it loses in the translation to English.

Finally (and mercifully)…

Q. What do you call a line-up of men waiting for a haircut?
A. A barbercue.

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything better—i.e., both good and original. Most of the jokes I know and tell are like the manuscript that Samuel Johnson is rumoured to have commented upon thus: “Your manuscript [joke] is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”

But as I said at the outset, for me, cheese is a food group all by itself, so I’m pretty sure that the pulling of Christmas crackers will not slip out of the annual ritual anytime soon.

(Attention lawyers, particularly those who represent Christmas cracker manufacturers: this is an opinion piece!)

Your Turn

What’s your take on Christmas crackers? Love ’em or hate ’em? Could you write better jokes? Then do so, below. What’s the best toy/trinket you’ve ever found in a cracker? Share by leaving a comment below.