Christmas crackers are one of the more amusing Christmas traditions in Britain. Christmas crackers are cardboard tubes (about the diameter of toilet rolls) covered in shiny paper. They contain a small toy, a paper crown (which must be worn) and a joke, riddle or motto. They also contain a small gunpowder charge, so when you pull them, they make a loud bang (or not, as the case may be!) You always pull them with someone else at the dinner table, never yourself, unless you are a sad and lonely person (cf. Mr Bean!)
Christmas cracker jokes are traditionally the sort that make you groan, often a dreadful pun. Today's Sunday Telegraph has a selection of the best and worst:
How did the human cannonball lose his job?
He got fired.Why did the skeleton go to the New Year's Eve party?
He had no body to go with.What did the beaver say to the tree?
Nice gnawing you. (beavers gnaw trees, 'gnaw' sounds like 'know')What does the word minimum mean?
A very small mother.What's round and bad tempered?
A vicious circle.Why don't ducks tell jokes when they're flying?
Because they would quack up. (ducks quack, 'quack up' sounds like 'crack up', i.e. laugh)What do you get if you cross a stereo with a refrigerator?
Cool music.
Read article and more jokes >>
Lesson ideas: Christmas cracker jokes are a great way to amuse your students and teach some useful vocabulary. One possibility is to mix up the questions and the punchlines, so that students have to match them up again.
Resources
- The History of the Christmas Cracker
- How to make a Christmas cracker
- Interactive jokes
- Top 10 Christmas cracker jokes
- More jokes
