It's A Cracker! by Ann Evans
Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? Got your Christmas crackers? I hope so because you can't have Christmas dinner without a festive cracker to pull, a paper hat to wear and a corny joke to tell, can you? But have you ever wondered who invented Christmas crackers? Well, if I was to give you two guesses, you'd say either the Romans or the Victorians. And for those of you who guessed the Victorians, you would be absolutely correct. The man behind the Christmas cracker was a London confectioner named Tom Smith. In 1830 as a young boy he worked selling fondants and pralines in a confectionery shop. He was especially interested in creating wedding cake ornaments and decorations and would experiment in making these in his spare time. He became so successful at it, he was able to set up his own shop in Clerkenwell, East London. Always looking for fresh ideas to bring to his cake ornamentation, it was in 1847 on a visit to Paris he discovered the ...