CHRISTMAS CRACKERS

Do you know how this accustomed addition to Christmas came about?
Well, I do.
I studied History at University and almost became a  Historian.
Since then I have always been interested in history and how things came about.
As an avid reader I come across interesting bits and pieces that I am able to put together to form a picture. Sometimes it is absolute discovery.

My sister makes her own Christmas crackers that have for years been sought after. They are nothing like the limp offerings from the supermarkets that rarely 'snap', have junk inside and because they are made cheaply in Asian countries have paper hats that only fit people with the smallest of heads.



Crap Christmas cracker

Good home-made Christmas crackers

Some other Christmas crackers

OK, how did Christmas crackers come to be?

Well do you remember the Crimean war? Of course you don't but you might have heard of it.

This was a war in the 1850's with the Russian Empire on one side and on the other the British Empire (still rampant), the French (nervous about the British) and the Turks (declining Ottoman Empire) with someone else. The Turks of course didn't suspect that the Brits were not just helping them to reclaim lost lands to the Russkis out of the goodness of their hearts and the French didn't really know what was going on but wanted to keep an eye on the Brits.

The Crimean war was really a fuck-up on both sides. There were some  memorable things ( Hey, if you want more information look it up. I only nearly became a Historian. Remember?)

Being a 'modern' war both sides experimented with ways of obliterating the other. (if you want detail then refer to my peevish comment in the paragraph above).

One of the British inventions was the 'McCracken's Cracker'.

Based on a field ambulance

and the legend of the Trojan Horse

(you can imagine it)

Sergeant Hamish McCracken a wannabe engineer who had made a career mistake by joining the Hussars, was frustrated at the stupid way that his commanders ordered them to charge at lines of cannon and believed that there was a better way to breach the enemy lines.

He tried to explain to his superiors that the human body even if protected by a busby and beard couldn't really stop a bullet let alone a cannon ball, let alone an exploding shell.

His 'superiors' with names now celebrated as items of clothing, stationery, motor vehicles and retail stores merely responded with " Arrr, but arrr, methinks that, errr one, I mean basica....ally, one should, arrr, do one's duty errr, to ahhh, do one's best then, arrr , my good man, don't you think?"

Resulting from in-breeding, public school up-bringing and a diet of brandy, gin and opiates the strategy of the day was generally this:

McCracken saw a lot of his men butchered in these mad escapades and was up to his knees in loading wounded and broken bodies into the afore mentioned field ambulances. It was then that he had the idea of giving the Russkis a great surprise. It was December 1855 and cold as hell (strange expression that) so the officers were wrapped up in their furs and plastered. McCracken called in some favours and got the artillerymen to load up some ambulances with explosives. They packed them in as tight as they could and interlaced them the munitions with 'surprises'. As you might expect in the Crimea in winter of 1855 there weren't a lot of wee gifts to be had but a quick forage in the kits of drunken, sleeping junior officers found a 'surprisingly'  large number of tin and lead toy soldiers.

The irony of loading these into his 'surprise packages' didn't escape McCracken so when the supply was exhausted he employed his men (those still with working limbs) to whittling and molding small cannon, guns, knives and other materiel that he deemed appropriate.

When the ambulances were ready it was late December. The sergeants began to move them forward to the enemy lines but realised that they might naturally be suspicious, after all the plan to assassinate Czar Nicholas with an exploding hat hadn't worked.

No, they would need to dress the bombs up a bit. McCracken decided to get into the Christmas spirit and secured yards and yards of brightly coloured paper and ribbons to disguise the shape and intention of them.
One of the bombardiers came up with the idea of having long trailing ribbons which could be pulled to detonate. The Russkis, duly mystified accepted the sneaky British trick and were obliterated.

This helped shorten the war and led to the  'McCracken's Christmas' as they called it being adopted into the arsenal.
After some modifications many were produced and tried out on fuzzy-wuzzies, wogs, Hindus, Chinamen and anyone else around the globe that the Brits didn't like. The invention was renamed the 'Chrsitmas McCracken' and eventually shortened to 'Christmas Cracker. Peace and Good-will to all men indeed.

Later advancements in science and technology saw more powerful explosives coming in smaller packages however so the Christmas Cracker as a munition was shelved. This meant that it was also declassified and soon variations were seen in the public domain.

At first they were like smaller versions of the original and resulted in many deaths and disfigurations of the populace so, in the best traditions of nanny states everywhere were toned down a bit.

And eventually resulted in the limp versions we have today

Unless of course you have an enterprising family member who can make their own, ideally with a bit of a bang inside.