Friday Fun: Ghosts of Christmas Cracker Makers Past

I had never heard of Christmas crackers until a few years ago. We were living in Jacksonville at the time. It was one of the years we didn’t go back to Denver to be with our family for the holidays.

A couple we’d met through swim team invited us to come have Christmas dinner at their house. They were actually from Brazil, but his sister had married an Englishman. He was the one who brought Christmas crackers for all of us.

After dinner but before dessert we all popped our crackers. Out spilled paper hats, jokes, and cute little golden ornaments. We put on our hats then went around the table reading our jokes. What a hoot!

Now I always buy Christmas crackers for the holidays. I never know what I’ll find inside or who I might share them with, but I’m forever looking for an excuse to play with Christmas crackers!

Out of curiosity I searched “Christmas crackers” on YouTube and found the below clip. It’s from the early 1900s showing factory workers at work making them.

That alone was fascinating to me, but then I read this comment someone left on the clip:

All these people are long dead. Ghosts from the past,

I don’t think people grasp how utterly astounding it is we get to peer in so casually on these people who were our ancestors. Never before in the history of mankind? was anything like this possible.

Put it in a whole different context when I viewed it thinking that way.

This post is dedicated to them: the ghosts of Christmas cracker makers past. And to the ones of today who carry on the tradition and bring a bit of fun and whimsy to the holiday.

Courtney Mroch

Courtney Mroch is a globe-trotting restless spirit who’s both possessed by wanderlust and the spirit of adventure, and obsessed with true crime, horror, the paranormal, and weird days. Perhaps it has something to do with her genes? She is related to occult royalty, after all. Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo practitioner of New Orleans, is one of her ancestors. (Yes, really! As explained here.) That could also explain her infatuation with skeletons.

Speaking of mystical, to learn how Courtney channeled her battle with cancer to conjure up this site, check out HJ’s Origin Story.