It is coming now, we are very close to the most exciting time of the year.
The pulling of the Christmas Cracker.
I know, I know – I know about the presents, the trees, the lights, the big meal and the small brandy (or two), but for me it has always been about the cracker. That small mysterious package that sits innocuous and ignored to the side of your plate. People chatting over the table as dishes are served and plates become laden with food.
I wait, not patiently, but I wait, and then before we eat, in that strange cross armed tradition, joined in peace and goodwill to all , we battle. We do, we battle. Tight grips and thumbs sneaking to the join in the cardboard – Snap! Crack! – paper hats, trinkets and jokes explode across the battlefield to exclamations of ‘I won, I won !’ and questions of ‘What did you win?’ and for the losers, ‘didn’t you win anything? – here have a hat’. Colourful crowns are donned, or swapped, ‘I don’t wear green’, jokes are joked, laughs laughed and groans groaned, and amongst all of this half forgotten, lies the real prize. Trinkets and treasures of no real concern to anyone but children perhaps and then only ever so briefly. Near useless objects or poorly made toys soon discarded within hours to be scraped into a bin with left over sprouts .
I’m not sure when the fascination started but I remember being only little, scooting around the table after the meal had been finished collecting the discarded knick knacks and toys, and my favourite, the little colourful plastic motorcycles. I’ve searched in vain around the family home, I’m sure there’s several years worth of motorcycles in a bag somewhere.
Why the fascination? back then, I don’t know, other than I hated the idea of a toy un-played with, it seemed sad that a toy would go discarded after such a brief moment of glory or not as the case maybe. As I got older I was in part a little disturbed by the wasteful nature of the tradition and tended to pocket these small items in the hope they’d have some use or purpose, but underneath all of this was perhaps respect, a respect for the Artisans. I know they are mass produced, churned out in their millions, but before then someone somewhere had sat and designed this small toy and someone else had carefully machined out, carved and polished a mould. Richard Seymour of seymourpowell once paraphrased that everything that isn’t nature, is design or has been designed by someone. Again this year I’ll watch eagle eyed for a toy plastic motorcycle and I’ll wonder – Who were my childhood design and engineering heroes that brightened every Christmas?
Tell me about which Christmas object or tradition brightens your Christmas ?
All images AI generated (AI Image from Fantasy World Generator)
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