Please email new ones you heard this year to us at contactus@dullmensclub.com. We’ll add them to the list that comes after the history lesson.
History of Christmas Crackers
Family pulling Christmas crackers
Christmas crackers are brightly colored paper tubes placed on plates at Christmas party tables. The tubes, when pulled on each end, break open with a cracking sound. A paper slip with a joke and a paper crown fall out. The jokes themselves — they “crack you up’ — are also referred to as Christmas crackers.
Christmas crackers were invented by Thomas Smith in 1846 when he was visiting Paris. He came across a bon-bon, a sugar-almond wrapped in tissue paper. Smith began importing bon-bons to England.
The bon-bons sold well in England at Christmas but not other times of the year.
In the 1850s, Smith started putting mottos in the bon-bons. As bon-bons were often bought by men to give to women, many of the mottos were love poems.
In 1860, Smith added the banger — two strips of chemically impregnated paper that made a cracking sound when pulled apart.
Over time, jokes replaced the love poems.
The jokes often are like Dad jokes or groaners.
Examples
Why does Santa have three gardens?
So he can Ho Ho Ho
Why does Santa go down the chimney?
It soots him
What’s Santa’s favorite cereal?
Frostie
Where does Santa stay when he travels?
At the Ho Ho Hotel
Why would you remove your door bell?
To win the no bell prize
How does the Pacific Ocean greet the Atlantic Ocean?
It waves
What did the snowman say to the other snowman who was standing next to him?
I smell carrots
What do you give a railway station master for Christmas?
Platform shoes
